Douluo: Manifesting the Black Abyss and White Flower at the Start-Chapter 325 - 324: Herta's Inference

In the chaotic times to come, with such a deep, era-crushingly advanced ally, the Earth Dragon Sect at least need not fear its heritage being severed nor having nowhere to settle.
"W-whoa… so many people…"
Elsewhere, the lively March 7 was accompanying the gentle, elegant Robin at the docks, welcoming and calming the masses of refugees transferred from Mingdu.
She watched the tide of ragged, hollow-eyed people pour from the gate, clicking her tongue in shock. Her powder-blue eyes brimmed with sympathy and worry.
"Has Mingdu gotten… this dangerous already…?"
After enduring a calamity like hell's descent, many had lost their homes and loved ones in an instant. Their minds hovered on the brink of collapse.
At times like this, even the slightest stimulus could spark a riot or plunge them into utter despair.
Now it was Robin's turn, a follower of the Path of Harmony.
A gentle warmth of Harmonious power naturally radiated from her, like sunlight softly soothing the terror and wounds in people's hearts—comforting souls drowning in great pain and keeping them from immediately falling into the abyss of despair or going to extremes.
"Miss Robin, please—come look at her!"
Just then, Ye Guyi hurried over, cradling a woman with an extremely faint breath and ashen complexion, her face etched with urgency and pleading.
She knew Robin must be stretched thin, but the Common Alliance's Master Shangguan Wei'er was in no condition to wait.
Wei'er's mental bulwark could no longer suppress the madly growing will of Destruction inside her. An eerie dark-red glint flickered in her pupils—she would soon fall completely and turn into a monster that knew only ruin.
"Is it her… the one who had a 'seed' of Destruction planted inside?"
Robin didn't hesitate. She immediately paused her large-scale calming and stepped in.
She extended slender, pale fingers wreathed in pure, colorless radiance and gently tapped Wei'er's brow.
The formless, intangible power of Harmony, laden with coordination and resonance, flowed into Wei'er's nearly shattered mind like the finest, gentlest rivulet—trying to smooth the raging whispers of Destruction and retune her chaotic spirit.
But the next second, the ever-gentle smile on Robin's face darkened into a frown, and a trace of confusion and gravity flashed in her lake-green eyes.
"This power… is 'rejecting' Harmony?"
She withdrew her fingers, her exquisite features turning uncommonly grave, and murmured, "This… feels wrong. Trickier and stranger than expected."
Haiyuan City and Lu Jingming on the Mingdu front had maintained close contact by special means, and Robin had long been briefed on Shangguan Wei'er's Destruction corruption. She had prepared accordingly.
Frontline intel suggested that the one who struck Wei'er was likely the terrifying Lord Ravager—Celenova.
A uniquely situated being—former Emanator of Harmony and current Lord Ravager—who wielded both the powers of Harmony and Destruction.
Because of this, Robin had pre-tuned her Harmony output's frequency and qualities, fully preparing for a combined Harmony-Destruction corruption.
She expected a delicate operation to separate and neutralize entwined forces.
But when her Harmony power truly delved into the raging source of Destruction at Wei'er's core, she realized things had veered completely off script.
"No… completely wrong…"
A sharp glint crossed Robin's eyes. She slowly shook her head, voice certain and solemn.
"The force directly invading her wasn't Celenova at all. What's inside her is indeed violent, but it's only the purest, most primitive Destruction—plus a residue of extremely filthy, depraved spiritual power. There's no trace whatsoever of Harmony."
This was no baseless guess.
Had Celenova struck personally, given her identity and power, she could not have left such a "clean" signature of Destruction.
As a former Emanator of the Aeon of Harmony, her power's foundation and habits were branded by Harmony. Even when wielding Destruction, an inescapable undertone of twisted coordination or resonance would linger.
For Robin, herself a follower of Harmony, that was unmistakable.
Thus only one conclusion remained: the one who directly planted the seed of Destruction in Wei'er was not Celenova.
And that malignant spiritual residue coiling the Destruction like a bone-burrowing parasite—cold, debasing, playing with hearts and profaning souls—gave Robin a sudden, dire premonition.
If not Celenova… then there was someone else.
And the hidden hand's power was clearly more insidious and hard to gauge.
"Oh? Now that's interesting."
A faint, perceptible ripple of space spread like water, and Herta appeared, lounging atop her signature magic staff crowned with a huge blue gem.
She cast a knowing glance at the mentally listless, chaotic-breathed Wei'er. A glint of all-seeing insight flashed in her eyes.
"Looks like the Lord Ravagers muddying Mingdu's waters aren't limited to Celenova… There's a sneakier fish hiding in the darkest depths."
Before her words faded, Herta flicked her hand. A soft, icy-blue, data-like radiance enveloped Wei'er in an instant, scanning at extreme resolution.
She would probe personally and see which Lord Ravager possessed such exquisite concealment.
Mingdu was long a boiling cauldron. Even someone like Celenova couldn't resist striking at the Xianzhou's Feixiao, ambushing the Cloud Knight general. Yet another Lord Ravager lingered like a ghost, skulking in the shadows without leaving a trace.
For one so patient, so adept at hiding, with such venomous cunning, the first name to surface in Herta's brain—rivaling a supercomputer—was an irksome one.
"As expected—Phantylia, that detestable wretch."
The icy-blue probe light faded. Herta's lips curved with a foregone smile. She pressed the wide brim of her witch's hat, her tone tinged with disdain.
That force coiled like a viper in the deepest recess of Wei'er's mind carried a wicked spiritual power that easily teased out mankind's darkest desires and fears, while mixed with a pure, absolute will to destroy.
Aside from Phantylia—the Lord Ravager who ascended via Ambrosial Arbor body and relished playing with minds—no second candidate had such a vile, distinctive signature.
"If I'm not mistaken, she's the Servant that Xu Tiannan managed to summon."
Herta lightly tapped her smooth chin, voice laced with detached amusement and mockery.
"I can't tell if the Sun-Moon Empire is lucky or cursed to the bone. A single Holy Grail War, and they summon two Lord Ravagers' memory-bodies… That's a roll, all right."
Beside her, Changli held an exquisite parasol woven as if from moonlight. Her gentle gaze swept the refugees around them—their eyes still empty, numb.
Clearly, they hadn't recovered from their hellish time in Mingdu. The terror clung deep on their faces.
She sighed softly, a sincere pity flickering in her eyes.
"A single city of Mingdu harboring two Lord Ravagers… For these people to escape alive and reach Haiyuan City is the greatest mercy fate could grant."
"Y-you've got to be kidding! T-two Lord Ravagers?!"
Unlike Changli and Ye Guyi—who were not from the Honkai/Star Rail worlds—March 7, who shared a universe with Lord Ravagers, felt the suffocating import of this news all too well.
Her face went white in a flash. Her hands clenched the hem of her clothes, trembling, clearly frightened stiff by the revelation.
She had heard countless horror tales about Lord Ravagers aboard the Astral Express. The thought that two such calamity-incarnate beings lurked in that city made her knees knock.
"Fortunately, they're only memory-bodies right now, their level of power worlds apart from their true selves."
Herta rolled her eyes prettily, tone exasperated.
"If it were their true bodies, never mind two-on-one— even a fair one-on-one, I'd have zero desire to fight any of them."
Emanator versus Emanator, with true bodies—mutual destruction was all but guaranteed.
Herta had no desire to die. She hadn't yet mined enough unknown cosmic secrets from the special variable that was Lu Jingming.
In her original universe, nearly all "knowledge" and "truth" were firmly grasped, parsed, and archived by the Aeon of Erudition, Nous' vast computational network.
After all, in Nous' calculations, every future was determined and inescapable.
Even a so-called genius Emanator of Erudition could only research, touch, and understand within the bounds Nous had already delineated as "known."
That universe's mysteries and the frontier of knowledge had been exhaustively decoded by the all-knowing Aeon, leaving almost no blank space for exploration.
No matter how deep a genius dug, how astonishing a discovery, the conclusion always came down to: "Nous already knew."
No true genius would willingly be shackled forever within a preordained frame.
The drive to push the borders of knowledge and hunger for the unknown is the core engine behind every true prodigy.
But with Nous' absolute existence, the frontiers of knowledge were sealed shut.