At the Scarlet Devil Mansion, after the travel arrangements were fully decided, Hong Meiling took some local currency from Sakuya Izayoi and led Flandre Scarlet out through the inn's front gate.
"Second Miss, is there anywhere in particular you want to go?" Hong Meiling asked, looking down at the young girl walking by her side.
"I don't know, didn't we just get here after all?" Flandre replied, tilting her head. "Did you see any interesting places when you were running around outside just now?"
Flandre indicated that it was entirely her first time visiting this area; they had been riding tucked away inside the wooden carriage the whole time, while only Hong Meiling possessed any real experience moving about the streets alone. So if anyone in their party had more relevant knowledge of this neighborhood, it was undoubtedly Hong Meiling.
As for Flandre... what she had seen on the television screens and obtained from her memories of this world wasn't nearly this detailed or precise.
Hong Meiling rubbed her chin thoughtfully, pondered for a brief moment, and said, "I did catch sight of a grand amusement park on my way to the ticket counter just now. How about we head over there to play for a while?"
Flandre instantly began jumping up and down happily on the pavement.
"An amusement park? Flandre absolutely loves amusement parks!"
Flandre fondly recalled her spectacular experience playing at the Lungmen amusement park during their previous stop, and her mood soared as she began to hop around with sheer joy.
"Then let's head out," Hong Meiling said with a warm smile, seeing Flandre agree so eagerly, and took the lead toward the distant commercial district.
Before the two had even walked a hundred meters down the public path, a sudden, violent gust of wind howled from behind.
A fully armored knight wielding a massive, heavy combat axe suddenly charged out from the nearby crowd of pedestrians. He swung his fierce axe directly toward the back of Flandre's head as she walked in the rear, the cold steel whistling through the air. It looked explicitly as if he intended to hack her to death on the spot.
He chose this savage approach because, upon arriving at the scene, he had listened to the hidden corporate scouts monitoring the area recount the details of what had happened earlier. Against two supreme experts who could easily dismantle over sixty Riding Police within a single minute, he understood perfectly well that he only possessed a single chance to strike.
So, he decided to launch a cowardly ambush against the small child walking behind. He aimed for a definitive killing blow, or at the very least, a crippling injury. Only by doing so could he cause the adult companion to fall into a brief state of emotional shock and panic, allowing him to seize the opening to strike again and cut the second target down as well.
The plan was absolutely perfect—if he hadn't unfortunately encountered Flandre and Hong Meiling.
The very instant he raised his heavy weapon and lunged forward, the two travelers stopped dead in their tracks. Flandre calmly turned her head back to look at the incoming axe blade with an entirely expressionless, quiet face, remaining completely still as if she were a fragile child paralyzed by sudden fear.
In the next fraction of a second, just as the sharp steel edge was less than half a meter away from splitting her open, a blurring figure materialized directly in front of her. Hong Meiling stood firmly before Flandre, casually reaching out her bare arm to catch the descending axe blade with a single hand.
Clang!
The massive weapon stopped instantly in mid-air, its forward momentum completely dead. Hong Meiling then looked up toward the hotel balcony not far away. Through the distant glass, she saw Remilia staring back down at the street, the Vampire Miss's eyes completely filled with an absolute, freezing coldness.
Hong Meiling couldn't help but let out a heavy sigh in her heart...
I have seen foolish people seeking death before, but I have truly never encountered someone seeking it quite as aggressively as you.
Launching a lethal ambush against the precious Second Miss right in front of the fiercely protective Eldest Miss. If the Second Miss were to lose even a single, tiny strand of hair from her head today, Remilia would highly likely ensure that every living soul within this corporate city was buried alongside the offender.
At this exact moment, Olmer's face beneath his reinforced metal helmet was completely twisted with shock. He hadn't held back his strength with this swing in the slightest; combined with the raw weight of the forged axe, the blow could easily slice a massive Tumor Beast completely in half. Yet such a terrifying, destructive force was actually caught effortlessly by a girl's single hand.
Is this something a living human being can achieve?
Looking at the deep finger indentations squeezed into the thick steel of the axe by his opponent's casual grip, he felt a momentary pang of heartache for his prized weapon. But in the very next second, a bone-chilling, instinctual dread crawled over his entire body, freezing the blood in his veins.
How terrifying would the physical strength of a woman who could catch his full-force swing with one bare hand truly be? Remember, he hadn't held back at all.
But in the next second, he no longer needed to worry about being afraid.
Feeling the intense, suffocating killing intent radiating from Remilia in the distance, Hong Meiling knew perfectly well that if she didn't take an immediately satisfactory action to neutralize the threat, this entire city might cease to exist after today.
She immediately wrenched the massive axe completely out of his grasp and tossed the heavy steel aside like a piece of garbage. Using the natural momentum of the knight's forward stumble, she stepped inside his guard, pressing her open palm firmly against his heavy chest plate.
In the next instant, the knight's entire physical size visibly shrunk by a third, precisely like a thin tin can being violently crushed by a heavy piston. He was then sent flying backward through the air at a ridiculous speed, smashing directly through a nearby stone flowerbed and landing on the cobblestones without making another sound.
Flandre had seen with absolute clarity exactly what had transpired just now. Although to the untrained eyes of the mortal crowd it looked as if Hong Meiling had only hit the armored opponent with a single, basic palm strike, the reality was entirely different. At that exact microsecond, the gatekeeper had utilized her master-level 'Qi' to deliver an incredibly dense, loving barrage of rapid-fire strikes from absolutely all directions against that iron can.
It could be truly called—a thousand strikes in a single instant.
Because of this overwhelming localized pressure, the opponent's entire body had shrunk so severely. He had been completely, thoroughly beaten into a pulp from the inside out. If one were to pry open the heavy steel armor right now, all that would be left inside was a mass of shredded meat; let alone the public, even his own mother wouldn't necessarily be able to recognize the remains as her son.
Hong Meiling didn't necessarily want to kill people in such a brutal fashion. But this foolish fellow's reckless actions had directly enraged the Eldest Miss; she had to give a decisive, immediate account. Otherwise, once the Vampire Countess chose to make a personal move, far more than just a single person would die today.
After the gatekeeper took action, Remilia's distant expression finally softened into a satisfied look behind the glass.
"Wow, Meiling, you are truly cruel when you get angry!" Flandre looked over at the crushed metal suit that was currently oozing dark crimson blood onto the pavement, letting out a light sigh.
Hearing Flandre's innocent commentary, Hong Meiling directly rolled her eyes toward the sky. After all, she could understand if absolutely anyone else in the world said something like that, but Flandre, do you truly not feel even a tiny bit of embarrassment calling someone else cruel?
By now, the surrounding crowd of civilian onlookers had completely and utterly dispersed, fleeing down the alleys in absolute terror. After all, someone had just truly and publicly died in the middle of the street. Seeing that elite knight who had shrunk by a third and was still actively bleeding out across the stones, absolutely no one in their right mind thought he possessed any chance of being alive.
At this time, the other corporate knights who had tags along with him from the club were also completely dumbfounded, standing frozen in place. Although they had been highly dissatisfied with the Brassrust Knight's dishonorable act of launching a back-stab ambush against a child, believing it completely violated the sacred knightly spirit, they hadn't expected the violent reversal to come quite so rapidly.
One second, the Brassrust Knight's deadly axe was about to split a young girl apart; the very next second, the strike was effortlessly blocked by a bare hand, and then his entire body instantly shrunk into a crushed can and was sent flying across the plaza.
Looking over at the calm woman who had executed the strike, the remaining warriors subconsciously swallowed hard, their hearts pounding against their ribs. For modern knights, the heavy, high-tech armor worn on their bodies was their absolute guarantee of survival and the primary source of their supreme confidence when facing enemies. Now, when a complete stranger demonstrates to you that this thick, expensive armor is like fragile paper in front of their fists—not only failing to save your life but even causing you to die a miserable, crushed death—absolutely anyone would be terrified.
As knights, they weren't necessarily afraid of a noble death; a glorious sacrifice in the stadium or battle was considered a great corporate honor. However, this kind of inexplicable, utterly dominant, and miserable street death was still a bit too much for their minds to handle.
"Let's go play!" Looking over at those remaining warriors who were completely scared witless, Flandre felt they weren't even a fraction as attractive as the bright rides of the amusement park.
Seeing Flandre turn and walk away so casually, Hong Meiling had no choice but to dust off her clothes and follow closely behind her.
A few minutes after the two mansion residents left the scene, the remaining corporate knights finally gathered the courage to approach the deceased Brassrust Knight. Just as they were carefully studying how to physically transport this heavy, crushed lump of metal away from the public flowerbed, Remilia, who was sitting comfortably back in the hotel lobby and had watched the entire process unfold, allowed a deep crimson light to flash dangerously within her eyes.