Deep in his mind, Fenghuang's voice carried an unusual weight.
"Don't tell her."
Three words. No room for negotiation.
"Her mental state cannot withstand any information about me right now. You should understand — what the name Fu Hua means in her memories."
Su Yu looked at Kiana's ashen face, and something clenched hard in his chest.
The white-haired girl had her right hand locked around the collar at her throat, her left hand balled into a fist at her side. Churning in those mismatched eyes was something he knew all too well.
Fear.
Not the fear of danger. The fear of losing something again.
"Relax, Squad Monitor. Calming down a spooked cat — I've got practice," Su Yu said inwardly.
Fenghuang's presence paused for a beat.
The next instant, Su Yu felt his body go slack as the System's old grandpa withdrew his divine hand. Su Yu rolled his shoulder, blinked twice, and let his eyes refocus.
"Time out! Time out!"
Ma Feima had been winding up for another charge — that shout hit him like a brick wall and nearly made him choke on his own breath.
Cheng Lingshuang read the room faster. She stepped back two paces, swept her gaze between Su Yu and Kiana, and with admirable tact, grabbed Ma Feima by the sleeve and steered him toward the edge of the floor.
"Whoa, okay, that substitute-play mode hits hard, but the aftershocks are no joke either..."
He rolled his shoulder with an exaggerated wince, pulling the face of a kid who'd just pulled an all-nighter gaming and was running on fumes.
Kiana's eyes stayed fixed on him, her whole body still coiled tight, those mismatched irises full of wariness. "Su Yu, you..."
"Shh——"
Su Yu raised a finger to his lips with an air of theatrical mystery, then leaned in close to Kiana's ear and dropped his voice.
"Don't look at me like that, it's creepy. Here's the thing... it was my cheat code."
"Cheat code?"
Kiana blinked, thrown off. Some of the fear in her eyes receded, replaced by confusion.
"Yeah! System assist! Cheat mode! Auto-battle!" Su Yu spread his hands, the picture of innocence. "Don't you remember? The other day we were watching that web drama — what was it, Reborn as the Invincible Dragon Lord — and the main guy had some old grandpa living in his head, right?"
"Mine's basically the same deal. A built-in Tai Xu Sword Sect trial card — it can temporarily simulate the moves of a grandmaster-level fighter."
Su Yu shrugged, wearing his most guileless smile.
"I figured, we've still got a ton of Valkyrie motion data to capture. That's a lot of work to put all on you. Since I've got this cheat code, why not use it? I want to... take some of that off your plate."
The last line came out softer. His eyes shifted into something unguarded.
Pure, simple care. Nothing behind it.
Su Yu wasn't lying.
He really had done it by linking to Fenghuang through the System. He'd just... left out one small detail. Specifically, the part where that old grandpa is actually the Squad Monitor you're most terrified of.
What do you call that? A well-intentioned technical omission.
Kiana watched him.
Watched him standing there still slightly out of breath, sweat beading on his forehead, forcing a grin just for her.
Kiana's hand slipped away from the collar.
A faint ring of finger-shaped impressions had been pressed into the metal.
"Phew... you scared me."
Kiana let out a long breath. The tension drained from her shoulders.
"Geez... so it was just the System." She muttered it, voice a little muffled. "For a second there — I know the Squad Monitor in this world is different from that one, but that look in your eyes... it was so similar."
"I thought it was..."
The words stopped there.
That name — even just rolling it across the tip of her tongue would have left a sting.
Su Yu acted like he hadn't caught her unfinished meaning. He let out a laugh and reached up to ruffle her white hair.
"What are you thinking? How would some dusty old relic like that ever end up inside me? The System just picked the most powerful template it had to run the sub, that's all. It's Tai Xu Supreme Arts — of course it's gotta have a little grandmaster flair, right?"
"Alright, stop letting your mind wander. Watch your senior brother show these two ungrateful disciples what a real beating looks like!"
He turned and jogged back toward the center of the floor, his retreating figure practically bouncing with energy.
"Junior Brother Ma! Junior Sister Cheng! Again! That last round didn't count — this time I'm getting serious!"
The thwacks and thuds of sparring resumed almost immediately from across the floor.
Kiana stood where she was.
She watched his back — watched him moving with clumsy determination, imitating, fighting, refusing to stop — and the expression in her eyes slowly grew complicated.
Did he really think she was that dumb?
Sure, Teacher Himeko called her an idiot. So did Bronya. Even her awful father liked to use that word.
But if she were genuinely the kind of brainless airhead who just giggled at everything, she'd have died a thousand times over during those months wandering the ruins of Nagazora — hunted by Schicksal, chased by Honkai Beasts, and constantly watching her own back against Herrscher possession.
She knew Su Yu was lying.
Just like that time with the enhancement serum.
That night, she'd clearly heard the muffled sounds he'd tried to swallow down. She'd seen the cold-sweat stains soaked into the bedsheet the next morning.
But he hadn't said a word.
He'd just smiled and told her: "Look — my grip's stronger now. I can carry more snacks for you."
And now was no different.
"System auto-battle." "Cheat code." Right.
That crushing pressure — like someone had reached in and swapped out his soul — the sheer weight of channeling a grandmaster's will through a mortal body. How could something like that be as breezy as he made it sound?
He was hiding it from her.
In his own way, he was carefully, quietly putting his body between her and all of the pain, all of the risk.
Leaving her only that laughing, carefree back.
"Big idiot."
Kiana murmured it under her breath.
She looked down at her own hands, clenched tight.
You're always calling me the idiot.
Always saying you're just some ordinary guy who wants to take it easy.
But every single thing you do — which one of those isn't more idiotic than anything I've ever done?
"Su Yu..."
Kiana lifted her head. A faint glimmer passed through those mismatched eyes.
You and the Fu Hua of this world are the same. Always hiding things, always keeping them from me...
Did you really think I wouldn't notice?
The sunlight from the skylight had shifted a little.
Dust still drifted.
The ceiling fan still turned.
She didn't cry.
She just tightened her fists a little more.
Three days — not fast, not slow.
The Inch Heart Dojo's motion-capture studio ran from dawn to dusk. Aside from the one hour at noon when Lin Zhaoyu cut the power without fail and physically marched everyone out to eat, the equipment almost never stopped.
Ma Feima contributed six Honkai Beast movement templates.
Cheng Lingshuang ran through all thirty-seven Zombie attack patterns from start to finish — twice. The second run was 0.3 seconds faster than the first. She wasn't satisfied and demanded a third take. Lin Zhaoyu pressed her back down onto the bench by the shoulder.
Fu Hua dropped by once.
She stood in the doorway for twenty minutes, adjusted her glasses, said "not bad," left a bag of tangerines, and walked away — even grandmasters have credit hours to earn, apparently.
Late on the third night.
Su Yu sat on the living room carpet, back against the sofa, laptop balanced on his thighs.
He stared at the translucent light panel floating before him.
On it, a progress bar. Pale blue, its leading edge crawling to the right at a visible pace. Above it, a line of text:
[Initial Motion Capture Data Collection Progress: 99.7%... 99.8%... 99.9%——]
Su Yu's fingers hovered above the keyboard. Still.
The moment the bar reached the end, the panel burst into a cheap fireworks effect — complete with a "ding-dong" sound effect.
[Congratulations, Host! Honkai Impact 3rd Initial Motion Capture Data Collection Mission — Perfect Completion! Rating: S-rank]
[Your adoptive father has witnessed your efforts over these three days, and is deeply gratified. While your personal combat contribution was roughly equivalent to that of a premium punching bag, you successfully rallied everyone who actually did the work — and that in itself is a remarkable talent!]
Su Yu's temple twitched.
"Thank you so much for the encouragement."
[Don't mention it! As a reward, your adoptive father has unlocked the following——]
The panel refreshed. A golden gift box icon spun three times in the center of the screen, opened, and a card popped out.
[Reward One: "Absolute Freedom Time Experience Card" Mechanism Upgrade!]
[Upgrade Details: Kiana Kaslana's Absolute Freedom Time Experience Card now supports a "storage" function! Daily unused freedom time will automatically accumulate and can be released all at once when needed. Current cap: 72 hours.]
[Plain language explanation: Before, it was a daily wage you had to spend the same day. Now you can put it in the bank — save it up and spend it all in one glorious go!]
[Note: First activation of new feature — bonus of five Experience Cards included. Still dare to call your adoptive father stingy?]
Su Yu lifted his fingers from the keyboard and let them hang in the air for two seconds.
Seventy-two hours.
Three days.
Which meant that if Kiana saved up three full months without using a single day, she could have an entire three days — completely unrestricted by distance. Three whole days of absolute freedom.
Three days to go anywhere she wanted.
Window-shopping. Catching a movie. Taking the subway to the other end of the city to eat a bowl of beef noodles she'd seen in some short video.
Su Yu's lips moved slightly.
"Alright."
He said it quietly enough that Himeko's game show next door drowned it out in canned laughter.
[Touched? Want to write a poem to commemorate the moment? Your adoptive father can proofread it.]
"Next item."
[Alright alright, no more sentimental detours! Here's your new mission——]
The panel refreshed again. This time, no fireworks. Instead: a massive exclamation mark pulsing in red, beneath a line of text two font sizes bolder than anything before it:
[Main Mission Update: Overture to Shake the World]
[Mission Description: What kind of great game doesn't open with a jaw-dropping PV? The motion capture is done, the data's in, the story material has been piling up — it's time to let this world get its first proper look at Honkai Impact 3rd!]
[Mission Objective: Produce the first promotional PV for Honkai Impact 3rd.]
[Settlement Method: Tiered rewards based on PV view count and spread. The higher the views, the richer the rewards! As for the specific tiers... heh heh, your adoptive father will keep that a secret for now~]
Su Yu pushed the laptop further away and sank deeper into the sofa.
Dynamic settlement. Uncapped ceiling.
It sounded exactly like the kind of pie-in-the-sky promises a shady boss paints: "Work hard enough and next year I'll be able to buy a new car."
But honestly——
He closed his eyes, and his mind automatically began assembling images.
The Hyperion warship, wreathed in evening light. A white figure diving down from above the cloud layer.
Wind threading through twin braids. Goggles catching the last sliver of sunset.
Thrusters trailing orange-red streamers — a meteor hurled down from the sky.
And then those words.
[崩坏3rd]
[HONKAI IMPACT]
If he was going to do it, he was going to do it right.
In this peaceful world — no Honkai energy, no Herrscher threat — he was going to make Honkai Impact 3rd land like a nuclear warhead, blowing clean through the aesthetic ceiling of every player still happily lost in Hero Versus Dragon.
He opened the asset library he'd just finished packaging.
Kiana's motion data. Fu Hua's martial arts guidance. Even Ma Feima's gracious cameo as a Honkai Beast. The raw material was top tier.
Su Yu's fingers tapped across the keyboard and pulled up the editing suite.
As the man the System had crowned "All-Capable Game Producer," he genuinely could do all of it — editing, VFX, modelling, rendering — and do all of it at a professional level. Industry standard, as they say.
[Hold on! Your adoptive father isn't finished! A standout promotional PV can't be done by the host alone!]
[System has detected the following critical roles are unfilled——]
[① Animator (CG/2D animation): ABSENT]
[② Music Director (original score/arrangement): ABSENT]
[Friendly reminder: While the host has acquired professional-level full-stack game production ability, "professional-level" ≠ "top-tier." If you want to make a PV that breaks the internet, you need — genuine geniuses.]
Su Yu stared at the two glaring red X marks on the panel. His brow furrowed.
"System."
[Present~]
"You've got black-tech everything — quantum anchor points, cognition algorithms, holographic motion capture arrays — any one of those could knock this world's tech tree sideways. Making an animation, writing a piece of music... you can't just handle it yourself?"
The panel went silent for a second.
Then several lines of text floated up, languid and unhurried, radiating the specific flavor of smugness that made Su Yu want to reach through the screen and throw a punch.
[You foolish little host.]
[Of course this System could generate it all at the press of a button. Forget the PV — I could conjure the finished game out of thin air for you.]
[But. Then what?]
Su Yu paused.
"What do you mean, 'then what'?"
[How do you help Kiana build bonds with the people of this world?]
The living room went quiet.
The game show next door had cut to commercial. The canned laughter died.
[Did you think the community system your adoptive father set up for you was just a toy for your personal amusement? That it was just a collectible card game?]
Wasn't that exactly why you built it — because you thought it'd be fun? Su Yu rolled his eyes inwardly.
The font on the panel changed.
Gone was the noisy sales-pitch tone. Each character sat squarely in its place — no exclamation marks, no wavy lines.
This time, not even a single emoticon.
The System that had always been a little unserious, always carrying that faint scent of someone watching the world burn for entertainment, turned unexpectedly grave.
[Kiana's existence in this world is anchored by recognition and bonds.]
[If everything is done by the System, if every miracle is a one-man show performed by you alone... then the only thread connecting her to this world will always be just you.]
[Do you know what the fundamental nature of a human being is?]
"A copy-paste machine?"
[Cannot send a single punctuation mark.]
[The fundamental nature of a human being is the sum of all social relations. The essence of the human is not an abstraction inherent in any single individual; in its reality, it is the ensemble of all social relations.]
"Whoa, hold on — are you seriously quoting Marxist philosophy at me right now?"
[You are the core anchor point. The relationships in the community are the anchor lines. The more anchor lines there are — and the more secure they are — the more stable her existence in this world becomes.]
[Conversely: if those bonds are severed, or never formed in the first place, then no matter how good your game is or how many views it gets, she remains nothing more than a virtual image for people to admire from a distance.]
[Being admired and being known are two different things.]
[An idol seen by ten million people is not necessarily more "real" than a friend remembered by three or five.]
Okay. Understood, everyone.
This was the classic "have it both ways" — not even bothering to hide it.
Push Kiana out as a "virtual" idol through the game.
And have Kiana go play the collectible card game with real people in real life.
The text on the screen gradually faded.
What remained was a single bolded line — carrying the swagger of a back-alley sage:
[Stop trying to eat all the food yourself. Learning to mooch gracefully is also a skill. Go rally some people, kid!]
[And then — go live a life worth talking about!!]
The fireworks effect exploded one more time. Just as cheap as ever.
Su Yu leaned against the sofa, his gaze drifting through the light panel and settling on a corner of the ceiling.
Completely at the mercy of this wretched System.
Everything it said sounded exactly like textbook psychological manipulation — and yet every single word had landed right on target.
Keeping Kiana here. He alone wasn't enough.
He needed to gather every source of light in this world and focus it all on her.
So Kiana is Ultraman Tiga? That makes me what — the Spark Lens? Actually, fair enough.
He thought about the first time Kiana had gone out alone to buy groceries. White hair tied in a low ponytail. Canvas shoelaces tied crooked. Standing in the entryway for a full ten seconds before she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin like a little soldier heading into battle, and opened the door.
She'd come back without cracking a single egg — and with a lollipop some little girl had given her along the way.
That was the first time she'd had a warm, spontaneous exchange with a stranger in this world.
One more anchor line. Thin — but it was there.
Su Yu exhaled, reached out, and dragged the mission panel aside. He opened his contacts.
Animator.
Music director.
His thumb scrolled twice and stopped on a name.
Scrolled twice more and stopped on another.
His mind turned over the pieces at full speed.
He knew better than anyone who lived in the Golden Courtyard of this world.
The problem was — you couldn't exactly walk up to someone and say, "Hey, want to help make a game PV for me? The pay is helping an invisible girl from another dimension build up her social presence."
You needed an opening. A reason that made sense. A reason that made the other person feel like the work itself was worth doing.
Su Yu's gaze paused on "Eden" in his contacts, then drifted to another familiar name.
Danzhu.
Assistant at Mobius Laboratory. Official duties: organizing experimental data for Mobius, cleaning the lab, and feeding the various bizarre biological specimens Mobius kept around. That was her A-side.
Her B-side was the stuff of legend in this city's anime community.
Online handle: "Danzhu the Great Demon King." Combined followers across all platforms: over a million. She was an UP-loader.
MMD, hand-drawn animation, multi-source AMVs, doujinshi MADs — whatever video format had anything to do with anime, she could do it, and she'd taken every single one to the top tier.
Half the credit for The Three-Year Sakura's viral explosion within forty-eight hours of launch belonged to her recommendation video.
That recommendation video itself was crafted like a miniature documentary — editing rhythm, transition design, copywriting — all textbook-perfect.
If she handled the first promotional PV for Honkai Impact 3rd, Su Yu had a hundred percent confidence the finished product would meet or beat the release standards of any first-tier game studio.
But.
Su Yu rubbed his temple, a headache forming. He opened the messaging app. Danzhu's last message was from a week ago:
"Su Yu, you shallow, friendship-abandoning jerk — I swear I will be your eternal enemy!!"
The backstory was complicated. Suffice to say, if Griseo the little painter heard about it, she'd probably mime out the whole drama for Kiana: "This is the karmic debt Su Yu-gege racked up, come to collect."
And beyond that, there was one more critical issue.
Danzhu was Mobius's person.
If he wanted to borrow Mobius's assistant for animation work, there was no chance Mobius would let her go without getting something in return.
That Doctor did everything on an equivalent exchange basis — and her definition of "equivalent" was always thirty percent above market rate.
His gaze drifted away from the laptop screen and swept slowly around the living room.
The sofa.
The coffee table.
The TV stand.
The shoe rack.
And finally came to rest in the corner of the living room.
Several cardboard boxes were stacked there.
The one at the bottom had gathered a thin film of dust. Its flap hadn't been fully sealed, and through the gap jutted a section of something white — a curved surface with a faint metallic sheen.
Su Yu's gaze settled on it and didn't move.
White Comet armor.
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