Inside the laboratory.
Dr. Mei forcefully rubbed the bridge of her nose.
For some reason, the moment she sat down, she felt a sense of distraction, completely unable to focus on her experiments... as if something monumental was about to happen.
"What's wrong?"
Sakura was leaning quietly against the cold wall, her eyes closed in rest.
The headphone-shaped device hanging around her neck provided true "noise cancellation." With the addition of two fox ears on top of her head, Sakura's quad-channel hearing was far too exceptional. To help her control it, Dr. Mei had custom-made this headset for her.
"No, I don't know if it's just my imagination."
As Dr. Mei stood up, the quivering peaks of her chest created gentle ripples in her white lab coat.
"Are my arrangements sound?"
In a rare moment of uncertainty, Dr. Mei asked for Sakura's opinion.
"Mei, believe in yourself."
"Just as we believe in you."
Lowering the arms she had crossed over her chest, Sakura walked slowly toward Dr. Mei, placing her hands firmly on Mei's shoulders.
"They will surely complete their missions quickly."
"You just need to be here when Kevin returns and say, 'Welcome back.'"
"..."
Hah.
"Thank you, Sakura."
Dr. Mei let out a long, deep breath.
Sakura was right; she was indeed overthinking things. Whether it was Kevin, Qianjie, or Elysia, they all had experience slaying Herrschers. In terms of both raw ability and combat experience, they were all top-tier.
This incident had been very sudden.
But even if the situation was as bad as she imagined, with a Herrscher orchestrating everything from behind the scenes, the three of them possessed the strength to shatter its ambitions.
Among all the teams, the only ones she truly needed to worry about were Wei'er and the others. However, as the "weakest" trio, they had the support of Shenzhou and Great Britain's navies as cover, so it was unlikely anything major would happen.
Finally...
Sakura and Su were both exceptionally powerful Fusion Warriors.
The former could fight Qianjie, who had slain the Herrscher of Ice, to a standstill, while the latter had "killed" the Herrscher of Sentience. This dual-layered security, covering both the physical and consciousness realms, was more than enough to protect the entire base. Furthermore, they had already learned from the attack by the Herrscher of Sentience. They were absolutely—
"Detecting large-scale spatial fluctuations!"
"Detecting..."
The piercing alarm had just begun to sound.
Before the warning lights could even flash, the entire world, in a fleeting, brilliant flash, was plunged into pitch-black darkness.
BOOM!!!!!
"Mei!"
"Mei!"
"This is..."
Amidst Sakura's calls, Mei, who had been knocked unconscious by the impact, slowly sat up, leaning against a wall.
Opening her eyes, Mei saw Sakura's face as a blur—partly due to the impact, and partly because her glasses had shattered. Mei didn't pay much attention to such girlish trifles (Kevin had called her a bookworm when they first met), and the round-framed glasses she wore were just an ordinary product.
The fragmented lenses had even carved a shallow wound near the corner of her eye... accompanied by a trickle of red that slid down from the bridge of her nose.
Finally.
Helped up by Sakura, Mei's vision cleared.
Her gaze swept across the scene... The Flame-Chaser base, carved out of an entire mountain range and extending more than twenty levels underground, no longer bore any resemblance to its former self.
The mountain had been leveled.
The earth had been pierced through.
Everything had been transformed into a scene of utter devastation.
As for why she was still alive, she could probably only thank the astonishing sight before her—a perfectly transparent, spherical ice sculpture, like a work of art, had formed above her and Sakura's heads.
[Yulin Dao · Hanyubingtian]
This was one of the two weapons Sakura possessed.
Before she acquired the [Dizui Qilei], this Soul Steel tachi, which was wreathed in wind and snow whenever unsheathed and was as thin as ice, was Sakura's first "partner." Even after obtaining the [Dizui Qilei], the [Hanyubingtian] always remained by her side to compensate for the Third Key of God's defensive shortcomings.
The spherical shield protecting them, [Bingtian Dongyun], was an ability Sakura had unleashed by driving her own Honkai energy through the [Hanyubingtian].
"..."
As sunlight streamed in through the collapsed surface of the earth, the radiant, iridescent domain of ice also illuminated... the massive, mysterious, pitch-black figure floating behind Sakura.
"Watch out!"
BOOM!!
[Bingtian Dongyun] alone could not have blocked that last attack.
Before the fist descended, Su, sensing the anomaly, had arrived a step ahead. He had attached the [Yinguo Lunzhuan], a manifestation of his psychic power, to the solidified [Bingtian Dongyun], successfully blocking the enemy's assault.
Following closely behind Su, Vill-V and Mobius also rushed out from two other directions. As the main experimental base for the Flame-Chasers, its defensive level was staggering, capable of withstanding a strike from the world's highest-yield nuclear weapon. The three scientists' personal labs, in particular, had protection levels several times higher than the rest of the base.
Even so.
The unknown attack had still annihilated the entire base in an instant.
The number of surviving members was even less than during the Herrscher of Sentience's assault. Most of the Fusion Warriors were away on missions, and the vast majority of those left in the base were ordinary people. Without protection... the previous attack had not even left behind many corpses.
A "crystal pillar" dozens of meters long slowly moved aside.
Only then could the survivors glimpse the true culprit behind this tragedy—
A Honkai Beast.
Not the Herrscher they had anticipated.
But a Honkai Beast with an extremely exaggerated appearance:
A translucent yet profound pitch-black body, with four menacing and grotesque arms; a sun-like halo suspended behind its head, with blade-like crystals orbiting its body; and gilded golden patterns the likes of which they had never seen before. The color of a Honkai Beast's exposed "veins" represented the concentration of Honkai energy within them. Such a brilliant, shining gold was completely unprecedented.
Moreover.
Whether it was the seemingly ordinary punch that required the combined strength of Sakura and Su to block, or the attack that had destroyed the entire base, neither was something an Emperor-class Honkai Beast could achieve. This was a Judgement-class Honkai Beast, and a Judgement-class on the level of the Herrscher of Flame!
Their assessment was perfectly correct.
But knowing the intelligence did not mean they knew how to deal with it.
If...
No, there were no "ifs."
The Honkai Beast invasion happening all over the world was, without a doubt, orchestrated by the black fellow before them! Its target and the timing of its strike left no room for wishful thinking—it had come straight for the Flame-Chaser base!
As for what this base contained...
"Mei!"
Everyone, including fellow researchers Vill-V and Mobius, stood in front of Dr. Mei.
As the most important and yet most vulnerable target in all of the Flame-Chasers, Dr. Mei was undoubtedly the "easiest" breakthrough point among them!
Just as the five of them stood on high alert, the pitch-black Judgement-class Honkai Beast did something very simple: it released its own Honkai energy.
That's right.
Dr. Mei was an ordinary person.
And if an ordinary person was instantly irradiated with an overdose of high-concentration Honkai energy...
They would die.