A true Child of Flesh might have escaped using the Authority of Shadow, but the Child of Flesh Evernight faced was merely a memory, making it incapable of breaking free from her ice prison—ice that could freeze memories themselves.
For Heinrich and Ding Lang, who were unaware of the truth, this was utterly astonishing. Heinrich exclaimed, "She actually stopped it?!"
Ding Lang glanced in shock at the deep pit below, then back at the surrounding Ice Prison. He knew that after the Elemental Rending Bomb detonated, it would leave behind an enduring Elemental Chaos Zone where any element-based magic would be impossible.
Yet Evernight had effortlessly summoned such massive ice walls. How could this be possible?
There were only two plausible explanations. First, Evernight's control over ice far exceeded Ding Lang's imagination. Second, these ice walls weren't ordinary "ice element" but some other substance entirely. Given the Child of Flesh's inexplicable slowdown when trying to dodge and its subsequent capture, Ding Lang naturally leaned toward the second possibility.
As the Child of Flesh staggered away from its failed attempt to break through the ice wall, disoriented and reeling, ice began to rapidly spread from the wall, quickly freezing half of its body and encasing it in solid ice.
A dark, swirling mist erupted from the Child of Flesh, battling against the ice and slowing its advance. Yet even so, Evernight's ice continued to creep across the Child of Flesh at a steady pace. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before the creature was completely Frozen solid.
Evernight turned to Ding Lang. "Stop gawking," she said. "Isn't our objective here to observe the Child of Flesh for research purposes to develop a Magitech Item specifically designed to counter it?"
Ding Lang opened his mouth, itching to retort, "Seriously, sis? You're practically thrashing this thing with one hand! Why not just finish it off now? What's the point of researching counters?"
But then, realization struck him. His expression shifted to one of hesitation, and he remained silent, instead silently observing the Child of Flesh before him.
Desperate to break free from Evernight's grasp, the Child of Flesh began to unleash its Authority with full force. The shadows swirling around its body churned like boiling water, and its expression grew increasingly savage. Teeth bared, it emitted continuous, guttural warning growls.
Yet even with this furious effort, the ice continued to spread at a slow but steady pace. Heinrich watched the scene unfold and muttered to himself, Is this... right? If I remember correctly, this creature should be a god of Greater Divine Power. Even if it's just a memory, its strength should still be comparable. How could the battle be this one-sided?
Hyacine, the Sky God who had once left Heinrich utterly awestruck, was also classified as Greater Divine Power. If Hyacine were here now, the fight against the Child of Flesh should have been a fifty-fifty struggle.
Hmm... Given that this is just a memory and Evernight is fighting on her home turf, if she's also a god of Greater Divine Power, the odds should be sixty-forty, maybe even seventy-thirty? But regardless, the power gap shouldn't be this massive, right? This is a complete beatdown!
Unless... Evernight's power isn't merely Greater Divine Power, but something far beyond!
But... could there really be a god more powerful than even Greater Divine Power? This was the first time Heinrich had ever heard of such a thing.
This wasn't entirely surprising. After all, in the Honkai: Star Rail game, Dan Heng had explicitly stated that Evernight possessed power comparable to an Emanator. Moreover, they were only fighting a memory fragment, so she was essentially toying with it.
In the next moment, the Child of Flesh resorted to 'severing its own arm to survive'—or, more accurately, tearing itself in half to forcibly break free from the ice's grasp.
No blood flowed from the torn flesh. Instead, wisps of black mist billowed outward. The Child of Flesh roared, and a pitch-black Domain erupted from its core, spreading like a massive black hole that engulfed everything around it.
Yet Evernight merely curled a strand of pink hair behind her ear around her index finger, gently stroking it to savor its soft, silky texture. She showed no sign of concern.
Whoosh~
A chilling wind swept through the air, abruptly slowing the expansion of the Child of Flesh's Domain. It ground to a halt as if frozen in time, stopping just meters short of reaching Evernight and the others hovering in mid-air. The dark abyss remained suspended before them.
A white, frozen-like visual effect appeared at the edge of the black spherical Domain. Ding Lang blinked in stunned silence, quickly realizing the Domain's nature: a spatial Skill. Once absorbed, one would be trapped in the Child of Flesh's territory, forced to battle it in an environment composed entirely of darkness.
But if that's the case, Ding Lang thought, glancing at the icy frost along the Domain's edge, doesn't this mean Evernight's ice has frozen space itself?
No, perhaps even more absurd: what if it wasn't space, but time, that had been frozen?
Ding Lang retrieved several Magitech Devices from his person, supplementing his naked-eye observations with machine-based analysis. After a moment, he declared, "With this data, given some time, creating a Magitech Item specifically tailored to counter this Child of Flesh won't be difficult."
Evernight nodded. "Very well. Let's return then."
Ding Lang interrupted, "What about the Child of Flesh? What will become of it?"
"This Ice Prison won't dissolve," Evernight replied. "Let it remain trapped within."
With a thought from Evernight, the three of them teleported back to their original room. Ding Lang stared blankly at the familiar surroundings, then glanced at the Magitech Device filled with data logs. If it weren't for the data displayed there, he might have doubted whether everything he'd just experienced was merely an illusion.
After a moment's hesitation, Ding Lang turned to Evernight and, gritting his teeth, asked, "Ms. Evernight, does everything we're doing to save this world... does it really matter?"
Considering everything that had transpired, Ding Lang now strongly suspected that Evernight possessed Authority over time. If that were true, was he truly himself? Or was he merely a shadow of his past self, a snapshot from a different timeline?
Now that he thought about it, the machine Ding Lang had invented in his third plan had directly detected someone observing their world. After he shouted, Evernight and Heinrich had materialized out of thin air.
The slim possibility was that they had just arrived in this world and happened to hear his call. The far more likely explanation was... that Evernight and Heinrich had been watching for a long time. If the machine hadn't discovered them, would they have continued to silently observe?
Like... reading a history book.