Free Web NovelChapter 253: Kiana: Dreaming of Becoming a Pro Persona Master
"Of course not."
Mobius looked rather bored, but she humored Ren anyway.
"You only manipulated the cognition of the Elysian Realm Palace itself. The real-life counterpart remains completely unaffected. Hua lost her memories of me due to her own personal reasons."
As for Ren mistaking Hua for some mythological archetype? Wasn’t that just a matter of fact?
As one of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers from the Previous Era, Hua was practically worshipped in the gospel legends penned by the disciples of World Serpent. No matter how absurdly exaggerated or utterly detached those texts were from her actual personality, she was the prophesied hero they glorified.
Not to mention, she was the pioneer of Project Ember. fгeewebnovёl.com
Tasked with scattering the seeds of civilization since the dawn of the Current Era, she had survived countless millennia thanks to her MANTIS lifespan. It was completely unimaginable how many mythical figures across human history were actually just shadows of Hua.
"I see. That makes perfect sense..." Ren muttered.
He paused, then turned his attention back to her. "By the way, Fu Hua, which mythology do you belong to? What true names have you gone by?"
Triggering a Change of Heart in the real world by defeating a human’s Shadow in Mementos was the fundamental rule of the Metaverse.
Naturally, defeating wild Shadows born from humanity’s collective cognition of myths wouldn’t affect the real, living deities they were based on. Ren wasn’t surprised by this caveat at all.
What really piqued his curiosity was her exact mythological identity.
"Fu Hua" was obviously a mundane alias she used to get close to him, and the name "Hua" that Mobius used didn’t immediately ring any bells in his mental encyclopedia of gods. Therefore, she had to have a far more famous moniker recorded in the annals of history.
Fu Hua let out a silent sigh.
"The past is like fleeting clouds to me, long scattered and forgotten," she said, clearly reluctant to dredge up history.
But faced with Ren’s questioning gaze, she finally relented.
"If you must have a familiar name to call me... you may call me Jingwei. In my earlier years, I walked the lands of Shenzhou under that title. The Edge of Taixu that you practice is the legacy I left behind."
"Celestial... Celestial Jingwei?!"
Before Ren could even react, Raiden Mei gasped. She covered her mouth, her violet eyes widening in sheer disbelief. "Fu Hua, you’re the legendary Celestial?!"
"To think a mythological figure is standing right in front of us."
Bronya sat side-by-side with Seele on the sofa, staring deeply at the silent martial artist. "And for the mysterious, omnipotent Celestial of legend to actually have a personality like this... The reality is far beyond Bronya’s calculations."
Having observed Fu Hua over the past few days, Bronya had pinned down her crippling inability to lie. Coupled with the subtle flash of shock from Fu Hua’s colleague, Rita, upon hearing the confession, Bronya deemed the claim highly credible.
Celestial Jingwei... Even I’ve caught whispers of that name, Ren thought, glancing around the room.
Even Dr. Tesla and Dr. Einstein looked visibly moved. Only Kiana had a completely blank stare, looking just as clueless as Ren secretly felt about the finer points of Shenzhou mythology. She clearly hadn’t heard of the title either.
It wasn’t too surprising.
The aura Fu Hua emitted lacked any sense of threat. Even if she was a bona fide deity in reality, Ren figured she must be a relatively mundane one in terms of fame and power—nowhere near the overwhelming might of Yaldabaoth, the false god entrenched deep within Mementos.
Besides, her divine title was "Celestial."
In the grand hierarchy of gods, a "Xian" or "Celestial" was a bit low on the totem pole. In modern, secular society, the title had been so diluted that people were casually tossing around terms like "Ramen God" and "Sushi God."
However, what truly caught Ren’s attention wasn’t her divine identity, but her last sentence.
It wasn’t weird that Fu Hua knew the name Edge of Taixu. During their time in the Kaslana Palace, Ren hadn’t exactly hidden his discussions about the martial art from her.
But during those talks, he had never mentioned that it was a cultivation method passed down by an ancient Eastern immortal. Ergo, her claim possessed an astonishing level of credibility.
Noticing Ren’s intensely scrutinizing gaze, Fu Hua assumed he was doubting her.
She wordlessly dropped into a stance, curled her hand into a fist, and struck the empty air.
CRACK!
An explosive sonic boom echoed through the room!
Despite her physical body being heavily suppressed by the Schariac Bloodline’s Honkai-neutralizing effects, she had generated a shockwave purely through arcane kinetic techniques.
Rita, suffering from the exact same suppression, froze.
She stared at Fu Hua—who was casually retracting her fist—as if looking at an incomprehensible monster.
Under the Schariac Bloodline’s negation, Rita had been stripped of her Honkai energy, effectively reducing her to an ordinary, physically weak girl. Yet her colleague, who by all rights should be suffering the same crippling debuff, had just shattered the sound barrier with pure muscle and martial mastery.
The sheer, inhuman absurdity of the display left Rita’s brain temporarily short-circuiting.
"That is definitely an Edge of Taixu form. And looking closer..."
Contrary to Fu Hua’s expectations, proving her identity only made Ren’s gaze turn intensely bizarre, leaving her thoroughly bewildered.
Ren narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her from head to toe.
The sleek, gray hair tied in a ponytail.
The chest so spectacularly flat it was practically concave...
If she swapped her current outfit for traditional robes, wouldn’t she be a dead ringer for the young boy demonstrating the Edge of Taixu inside the golden Fenghuang Down feather?!
The moment the realization struck him, the mental fog surrounding his memories shattered.
The hazy blur obscuring the face of the gray-haired youth in his mind’s eye instantly dissolved, revealing Fu Hua’s signature, painfully stoic expression underneath.
Ren had previously assumed the figure in the feather was merely some recorded disciple, not the ancient Eastern immortal who actually created the technique. freeweɓnøvel.com
But now? Not only was the figure the legendary Celestial herself, but she had never been a boy to begin with!
When it came to Fu Hua’s figure, Ren could only offer a sympathetic thought: Well, there’s always the future.
Compared to the era recorded in the feather, her chest had, at the very least, gained a microscopic degree of curvature. Give her a few more millennia, and maybe one day she’d finally develop to the point where people could recognize her as a bona fide woman at first glance.
"...Is there a problem?"
Ren’s profoundly weird gaze was making Fu Hua’s skin crawl. An inexplicable sense of discomfort washed over her, and she awkwardly clenched her fists.
"No, nothing," Ren replied smoothly, averting his gaze. "I believe you."
---||---
"Um, Miss... Mobius?"
Kiana, hopelessly lost on the current topic but not caring in the slightest, slyly shimmied over to the green-haired scientist.
She rubbed her hands together like a scheming merchant. "I heard you say you became Ren’s Persona after forming a contract with him. I don’t have a Persona yet! Could you make a contract with me too?"
Mobius blinked.
"If you become my Persona, I’ll buy you whatever you want to eat!" Kiana bribed shamelessly. "You can stuff yourself with burgers until you literally explode, it’s on me!"
"I merely had a fleeting whim to taste the culinary offerings of the real world."
Mobius’s eyes twitched. For a second, she looked utterly appalled. This swiftly morphed into a mocking sneer reserved exclusively for single-celled organisms.
"Do you take me for some primitive lifeform that can be bribed with junk food? Just because you operate on that level doesn’t mean the rest of us do. Your childishness is frankly pathetic."
Who’re you calling a primitive lifeform?! Kiana almost exploded.
But as the collective gazes of the room zeroed in on her, she violently reigned in her temper. She cleared her throat, delicately smoothed out the hem of her dress, and plastered on the polite, refined mask of a high-society lady.
"Ahem. Miss Mobius, it is rather inappropriate to insult someone merely extending a hand of goodwill. I was simply asking a question."
At first, Kiana had been desperate to recruit the Mobius doll. She wanted the exact same Persona as Ren to become a cool Persona User just like him.
But now? Merely looking at Mobius’s smug face made Kiana’s fists instinctively clench and a vein bulge on her forehead. There was no way in hell she wanted this insufferable snake as her Persona anymore.
"Kiana... you can’t form a contract with Miss Mobius. And even if you could, I wouldn’t recommend it."
Watching her best friend physically strain to maintain her "graceful lady" act, Mei sighed. She felt a deep, maternal exhaustion in her soul. She massaged her temples before explaining things to her clueless friend.
"Ren can wield multiple Personas because he possesses a supremely rare trait called the Wild Card. Only a Persona User with the Wild Card can form contracts with multiple Personas."
Mei gestured around the room. "For normal people like us, we can only awaken the single Persona inherent to our own hearts. At best, we can evolve it to the next stage through personal growth."
"While there are exceptions—like Bronya borrowing the power of another’s heart to awaken her Persona—borrowed power will never be as perfectly synchronized as a Persona born from your own soul. Unless you have absolutely zero potential to awaken your own, I wouldn’t recommend taking the contract route."
Midway through her explanation, a sudden chill ran down Mei’s spine.
She subtly glanced to the side.
Bronya was silently nibbling on a burger, shooting Mei a gaze so incredibly salty it could preserve meat.
Despite being annoyed at being used as the "negative example" for Kiana, Bronya had no valid counterargument. She could only sit there, munching grumpily while Seele softly patted her back in consolation.
Bronya was painfully self-aware. While she possessed exceptional adaptability to Honkai Energy, her aptitude as a Persona User was practically zero.
If it weren’t for Seele gifting her the Treasure Project Bunny 19C, and Ren helping her secure the Core Fragment from the Herrscher of Reason Palace, she never would have awakened a Persona on her own. Even now, her path forward was rocky at best.
"You can’t awaken a Persona in the real world," Ren interjected.
Somewhere during the conversation, he had stealthily inhaled a monstrous burger the size of a soccer ball. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he looked at Kiana.
"But if you’re determined, I can take you into Mementos tomorrow. As long as your will to rebel is strong enough, you’ll awaken the Persona dwelling within you."
It was perfect timing, honestly. Ever since returning to reality from the Velvet Room, the Metaverse Navigator app had pinged with a new destination.
After resting up tonight, Ren planned to lead the Phantom Thieves to infiltrate this newly discovered Palace tomorrow.
"Hell yeah!" Kiana cheered, pumping a fist into the air. "I’m gonna be a pro Persona Master!"
