"But Divine Blood is different from Holy Blood. It rejects all 'outsiders.' Even if Kallen's body is adapted to Divine Blood, the Divine Blood within you is unwilling to enter hers, unless—"
Otto paused dramatically, his gaze slowly drifting to Anna's pale little face. He deliberately plucked at everyone's heartstrings, balancing them on a razor's edge.
This girl, who had never been in love before, was willing to risk execution to save the first person she had ever loved—someone who loved her back.
Deep love breeds deep hate.
The more innocent the first love, the more severe the emotional fastidiousness.
If she were forced to watch the boy she loved voluntarily unite with a woman better than her, how would she feel?
Thinking of this, Otto couldn't help but chuckle softly. "Unless you become 'one,' quite literally. Divine Blood is not an inanimate object. It can discern your heart and determine if the other person is someone you recognize as 'important.' This kind of soul-level recognition cannot be faked."
Otto revealed an expectant look.
"Wrong," Li Wu retorted coldly. "In the Babylon Tower, I fed Anna my blood. She is standing here perfectly fine right now. You are lying to me."
Hearing this, Anna's eyes lit up.
But in the next second, Otto crushed her hope. "Back then, the Divine Blood within you hadn't fully awakened. The fact that you could patiently listen to me finish speaking proves that the Divine Blood within you is now extremely active. If you don't believe me, you can try feeding your Divine Blood to Anna or Kallen again. Either way, it will reject her. Of course, there are risks. Kallen's body can naturally adapt to Divine Blood, but without your recognition, there will be mutual rejection. And Anna is far from meeting that standard. Even just a single drop of awakened Divine Blood entering her body would instantly devour all the Holy Blood within her, ultimately killing her from the inside out."
"Eaten clean, essentially."
Hearing this, Anna actively walked up to Li Wu, grabbed his hand, and shouted, "I don't believe it!"
After speaking, she prepared to bite down on Li Wu's finger, intending to use facts to prove whether Otto's words were true or false.
"Just one drop. You won't die, I promise," Li Wu said to Anna.
Half a minute later—
Anna died.
Another half minute later—
More than half of Li Wu's head was destroyed, yet he still failed to trigger Return by Death.
Even though he destroyed half of his own brain, his life force continued to burn intensely. The Divine Blood boiled, transforming into an eerie doctor more skilled than any healer, stitching his wounds seamlessly and restoring him to his original state without a single flaw.
Li Wu didn't give up. He repeatedly tried to kill himself in the most direct ways possible.
He pulled a rib from his chest and ruthlessly stabbed it into his furiously beating heart. Golden blood splattered onto the floor with a sizzling sound, like searing hot iron.
Schicksal gathered the world's most cutting-edge technology. The floor, crafted with precision tech and special materials, was melted through in several medium-sized holes by Li Wu's blood, as easily as magma melts dry wood.
This state didn't last long.
Li Wu's impaled heart rapidly regenerated. No matter what he tried, the Divine Blood would reactivate the stopped heart, forcing it to beat violently again.
Li Wu was getting annoyed. He directly tore the various blood vessels connected to it and ripped his heart out of his body.
He thought this would finally allow him to trigger Return by Death, but to his surprise, he found that the heart in his palm gradually lost its vitality, eventually turning into a piece of ordinary rotting meat.
Meanwhile, a brand-new heart grew inside his chest cavity.
Otto watched attentively, unsurprised.
Beside him, Cecilia looked as if she had seen something incredibly horrifying—no, not "as if." Li Wu's abrupt act of ripping out his own heart made her feel like thorns were prickling her back. Several drops of cold sweat slid down from her forehead to her pale cheeks. Her mouth formed an "O" shape, unable to utter a single word.
Li Wu... what kind of existence was he?
Organ regeneration... immortal body... extreme self-mutilation... super-high temperature blood...
Should such a creature really exist?
Holy Blood... Divine Blood... Progenitor of Holy Blood...
The Holy Blood that the Kaslana and Schariac families took pride in was merely an incomplete, castrated version? The true, complete Divine Blood shouldn't exist in this world at all!
Seeing Li Wu repeatedly fail at suicide, Otto clapped his hands, his expression revealing unprecedented delight. "Marvelous! You are exactly as I imagined. Once awakened, you don't care about the harm you inflict upon yourself... That's right. Relying solely on yourself, supported by the complete Divine Blood, you can no longer return to the past, nor can you... change the tragedies that have already occurred."
Li Wu's gaze remained cold. He stopped his self-mutilation and shifted his gaze to the floor—
To a charred corpse that had been burned to ashes.
Anna Schariac.
As an A-Rank Valkyrie with only Honkai energy as her power system, she couldn't withstand the potency of the Divine Blood at all.
Just as Otto had said, she died after the Divine Blood devoured all the blood in her body.
"You seem to think you can control the whole situation, but I don't like being led by the nose. Someone is still waiting for me."
Li Wu took one last look at Anna, then turned and walked up to Kallen. His face was as calm as a still lake, ripple-less. "Although I don't know why you've become like this, since you share the same blood as me, you should be able to kill me."
"Li... Wu..." Kallen tilted her head, still calling his name in ignorance.
Otto's expression remained breezy, speaking with a nonchalant tone. "It's useless. Even you can, at most, make Kallen perform some instinctive actions. Kill you? Even if she could, she wouldn't do it."
However, in the next second, Otto's face filled with shock. He immediately shouted at Kallen at the top of his lungs, "Kallen, wait! Return to the throne!"
As long as she returned to the throne, Kallen could regain her sanity!
It was too late.
Li Wu slowly raised his hand forward, his fingertips landing on Kallen's forehead. An indescribable rule, like the fundamental law of entropy increase in the universe, was calmly declared by Li Wu:
"Kallen Kaslana, I order you to kill me."
[Future Loan].
An ability that could be called unsolvable.
Its biggest flaw was that the repayment price was determined by the energy of the target affected.
Otto knew about the characteristics of his Return by Death, but he didn't know about the existence of [Future Loan].
[You have borrowed the result of Kallen Kaslana killing you.]
[Kallen Kaslana will not kill you at this moment, nor at any point in the future. Judgment... Judgment... You cannot fill the process of her killing you at this point in time or in the future.]
[Upon your next death, you will return to 500 years ago and undergo continuous reincarnation until—]
[You help her find a reason why she must kill you.]
The moment Li Wu's voice fell, Kallen Kaslana's eyes gradually became clear, followed by endless resentment and sorrow.
Her azure eyes rippled with broken waves, circle after circle. Sadness spread like mist, permeating every mechanical creation in the decaying room.
"Ha... Hahaha... Li Wu, Li Wu!"
"Why... Why don't you love me?!"
"Why can't you love me!!!"
Kallen bit her lip until it bled, laughing maniacally, blood in her mouth. Her hands strangled his neck tightly as she screamed hoarsely.
A contamination on the level of rules began to corrupt his immortal characteristic. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life on his back gradually faded, annihilating along with his majestic life force.
Everything felt so familiar.
Li Wu remembered.
Back at Raven's Roost, when Raven fed him Holy Blood while he was unconscious, he had dreamed of this scene.
"So it was you." Being strangled, Li Wu's voice was as light as smoke.
CRACK—
His neck was snapped, his gaze drifting.
In the lingering moments of his consciousness, a few teardrops, gentle like rain carried by the wind on a stormy day, fell softly onto his face.
Dreamlike and illusionary.
Cold to the extreme.
"Why... did you have to leave..."
The last thing lingering in his ears was Kallen's soft mutter.
As the Kabbalistic Tree of Life was eroded by this nameless contamination and completely dimmed, Li Wu was confirmed dead.
A second before the temporal regression, a hoarse voice still came through—
"I hate you."
"But, I don't blame you."
...
...
After returning, the moment Anna lowered her head, Li Wu pulled his hand back.
"Li Wu?"
Anna froze in place, biting her lip and asking unwillingly.
Li Wu looked at Anna expressionlessly, not even meeting her eyes.
His mind began processing the massive amount of information from the previous loop—
Once the Divine Blood was activated, he couldn't rely on killing himself to return, because he simply couldn't die. Even destroying his brain or removing his heart was useless.
His consciousness and life were maintained by a strange force. Only by using a power of the same level to suppress that force could he die.
And... there seemed to be no upper limit to the stacking of Divine Blood. This meant that once activated, he had to resolve the Divine Blood modification process as soon as possible.
Otherwise, if dragged out, even Kallen might not be able to kill him later.
Wait thirty-six hours, forced death, forced return, fall into eternal reincarnation.
Furthermore, [Future Loan] had accumulated too much "debt." Distance and money didn't need much consideration.
The main priority was repairing the body's activated Divine Blood; clearing this debt was the current priority.
Secondly, there was the latest debt, which had a completely different inheritance mechanism from all previous debts—
Upon the next death, return to 500 years ago and undergo continuous reincarnation until helping Kallen find a reason she had to kill him.
Li Wu understood the calculation mechanism of [Future Loan] even better now.
It was indeed omnipotent, putting the effect before the cause.
Like a "Magic Mirror" that knew everything and could give anything, it found the specific result among countless possibilities.
Even if the process required the user to fill it in themselves, it would provide a path to fill that process.
Just like now, he couldn't make the current Kallen Kaslana kill him, so the system directly sent him back to the past, plunging him into a reincarnation loop 500 years ago until that cause was filled.
Li Wu blinked, pulling his thoughts back and focusing on resolving the Divine Blood issue.
"Letting you swallow the Divine Blood is indeed the most effective way to prove it. However, I have already verified it. Swallowing the Divine Blood will kill you. There is no need to try. Anna, you and Cecilia leave. The following matters have nothing to do with you."
Was there something wrong with his phrasing?
Li Wu intended to say, "I don't want to involve you," but it came out like that.
Forget it, that wasn't important.
Anna froze, her pink eyes suddenly dimming. Something inside her seemed to shatter. "Don't lie to me. I haven't even tried yet. You must be lying to me! You're always like this, you like joking with me... This isn't funny. I'm really angry... Let me try. I can do it. As long as I can hold on, you won't have to... won't have to... won't have to unite with... another woman... Please, Li Wu, let me try... I really can... Please... let me try, just once... just once!"
Anna grabbed Li Wu's arms with both hands. Due to losing control of her emotions, her hands trembled uncontrollably. Looking up, she realized there was no smile on Li Wu's face. It was still that same ancient, ripple-less, gloomy expression. He wasn't teasing her.
Anna's heart felt like it was being gripped tightly by a falcon. Her hands slowly let go of Li Wu, no longer clinging. "Is this... your choice?"
Choice?
Li Wu didn't answer, only nodded, turned around, and said to Otto, "If I unite with Kallen, I can prevent the awakened Divine Blood from devouring my body?"
"Is that so... I understand. I'm sorry... It turns out, it was all just my wishful thinking... Ha, haha... I made a fool of myself. I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... Sob..."
"Sob... I... I'm too useless... If only I were strong enough..."
A young girl's heart is always suspicious and sensitive.
After learning that Li Wu refused to let her try, Anna could still deceive herself, pretending Li Wu just didn't let her try because he was worried she would die.
Even if her heart shattered into countless pieces, she could humbly kneel on the ground, pick them up piece by piece, and patiently piece them back together, even if it took a lifetime.
But after hearing Li Wu's words just now, the fragments on the ground became thorny. Just a light touch pierced her all over.
Maybe Li Wu didn't really mean it, but... but... how could anyone watch the person they like say such things right to their face?
It hurt so much...
It was so sad...
It was so painful...
Anna suddenly fell to her knees, clutching her chest tightly with both hands, still unable to cover the heart-wrenching pain.
"Waaaaah!!"
"Waaaaah!!!"
The feeling of abandonment was like a bursting dam, instantly collapsing all her psychological defenses.
Injured, bleeding, even when her body was nearly torn apart by enemies on the battlefield and she was about to die, Anna hadn't cried.
But for some reason, she couldn't hold it back.
Tears flowed uncontrollably, bursting from her eyes, making a fool of her in the most wretched and pitiful place.
"Of course!"
"After leaving the throne, Kallen has long lost human emotions. Even if you rush up now and unite with her in various positions in front of others, she won't show any expression. She'll just look at you like an animal, paying no attention to your behavior."
Seeing his plan succeed, Otto became even happier.