A few hours earlier.
Arc City. Deep beneath the Anti-Entropy Entertainment building, far underground.
A hidden elevator with no floor markings was plunging downward at high speed.
The weightlessness made his eardrums bulge faintly.
Su Yu stood inside the elevator car, watching the red digits flickering and descending overhead.
Beyond the glass directly facing the elevator doors was a bottomless, pitch-black vertical shaft.
As the elevator continued to descend, the surrounding temperature grew colder and colder.
"Ding."
The elevator doors slid open to either side.
A current of air mixed with the scent of machine oil, ozone, and cold metal rushed toward him.
What unfolded before Su Yu's eyes was an underground space so vast that its boundaries couldn't be taken in with a single glance.
Searchlights crisscrossed across a domed ceiling dozens of meters high, and enormous mechanical crane arms hung in midair like the tentacles of some monster.
In the deepest part, at the center of rows upon rows of scaffolding, stood that black steel behemoth dozens of meters tall—"Wotan."
It was the decisive-battle weapon that Welt Yang had poured ten years of his assets into, forging it alone in secret.
After Mobius had cracked the wreckage of that damaged "White Comet armor" and analyzed part of its data, Anti-Entropy's research team had finally found a breakthrough. And the first-phase result they'd produced was exactly what Su Yu had come to collect today.
Su Yu walked forward along the passage laid out with metal grating. His boot soles struck it, giving off hollow echoes.
At the end of the passage was a core laboratory sealed off by high-strength blast-proof glass.
In the center of the lab stood a silver metal table.
"Hsss—"
Accompanied by a sharp hiss of releasing hydraulics, a specialized alloy briefcase on the metal table flipped open to both sides.
A vast amount of white cold vapor spilled over the edges of the case like a waterfall, spreading rapidly across the floor.
Once the vapor dissipated—
The case was lined with thick shock-absorbing foam.
Dead center, resting quietly, lay a tactical dagger without any superfluous ornamentation.
Its full length was only about thirty-five centimeters, its entire body a light-absorbing matte black.
The edge had no reflection, and the hilt was wrapped in coarse dark-gray friction-increasing bindings.
It looked as ordinary as some cheap thing dug out of the corner of any random military surplus store.
"Don't be fooled by its unremarkable appearance!"
A woman with a bird's-nest tangle of red hair and deep dark circles under her eyes suddenly popped out from behind the operating console.
Tesla, clutching a grease-stained wrench in her hand, slammed headfirst into the blast-proof glass and shouted at Su Yu.
"That's the result of forcibly compressing it with a three-thousand-ton molecular forging hammer! We mixed in the highest-purity Pseudo-Soulsteel we managed to extract! This is a truly indestructible blade, the hardest metal humanity can currently produce!"
"Pseudo-Soulsteel?" Su Yu asked.
"The alloy formula Mobius reverse-engineered from the data of that busted-up White Comet armor of yours," Tesla explained. "Even though we don't have Honkai energy as a catalyst, we substituted the ultra-high-temperature plasma of the Hephaestus Forge for the energy-injection step. The final product's hardness, toughness, and energy-conductivity reached sixty-seven percent of the original Soulsteel."
"Sixty-seven percent?"
"In a world where Honkai energy doesn't even exist, to achieve this much, you should kneel down and call me your great-auntie." Tesla rolled her eyes.
Su Yu smiled and walked up to the metal table.
"Thanks, Dr. Tesla."
He extended his right hand and quite casually gripped that matte-black hilt.
His muscles had long since been enhanced beyond those of an ordinary person by the first-stage Genetic Lock; lifting something weighing over a hundred jin one-handed was no difficult feat.
His fingers closed.
Su Yu's wrist prepared to exert force, lifting this short blade barely over a foot long—
"Thud."
The front half of the dagger rose barely an inch, then slammed back down hard onto the shock-absorbing foam. The impact even made the metal table let out a dull hum.
Su Yu's arm froze in midair, the muscles in his shoulder instantly tensing.
He was stunned for a moment, then exerted force again.
This time he lifted it easily enough.
The dagger was now in his hand.
Su Yu looked at the short, vicious weapon in his grip.
The pulling sensation transmitted through his wrist told him clearly that this thing's weight simply defied common physical sense. It was like thinking you'd picked up a glass of water, only to find it was filled with an entire glass of mercury.
Forget an ordinary person—even a specially trained special forces soldier, never mind swinging it, would find just holding it a strain.
Even Su Yu, with his first-stage Genetic Lock activated, gripping it in his hand, felt like he was hefting a solid iron sledgehammer.
A faint clink of porcelain came from beside him.
Einstein sat in a height-adjustable chair, holding a cup of still-steaming coffee.
That head of naturally curly gray hair looked somewhat disheveled.
"Precise weight, 81.4 kilograms." Einstein took a sip of coffee and reported a set of figures that left Su Yu a little dumbfounded.
She set the coffee cup down on the console.
"Its density is dozens of times that of ordinary military titanium alloy. So, when Dr. Tesla was casting it..." Einstein paused and looked at Su Yu.
"In pursuit of not deforming or fracturing under extreme impact, she removed all hollow designs that could reduce the weight." Einstein picked her coffee back up. "Please hold it steady. If you happen to lose your grip—please mind your toes."
Su Yu: "...Thanks for the warning."
He weighed the dagger in his hand.
81.4 kilograms—no wonder it needed a hydraulic case to hold it.
Though this weight was nothing to him as he was now, this was a dagger under 35 centimeters. Just as Einstein had said, this thing's density exceeded his imagination.
"Don't listen to that stone-faced woman's nonsense! This is called the ultimate romance, you get it?!"
Tesla charged in through the glass door, pointing at the dagger in Su Yu's hand.
"See that little gear at the base of the hilt? Press it down!"
Su Yu placed his thumb on that slightly jarring gear switch and pressed down hard.
"Hmmm—!"
There was no roar as expected, but rather an extremely piercing, high-frequency buzz that seemed to bore straight into his marrow.
Su Yu felt a slight but extremely high-frequency vibration transmitting through the hilt in his hand.
The originally matte-black edge of the blade, due to the blade body's high-frequency oscillation, generated violent friction with the surrounding air.
A ring of dark-red plasma heat wave lit up along the edge. The surrounding air began to twist and distort under the searing of this heat wave.
Su Yu gripped the knife and didn't hesitate.
He closed his eyes and mobilized the energy within his body.
In this world, he had no Honkai energy. But the Tai Xu Sword Qi that Fenghuang had taught him resonated in some peculiar way with the power of his own Genetic Lock, and that life energy could be perfectly controlled by him.
A faint, barely perceptible wisp of white qi seeped out from Su Yu's wrist, spreading up along the black hilt.
When the Tai Xu true qi touched that high-frequency oscillating blade—
On the dull black metal surface, rows of dark-gold ancient sword patterns emerged with startling abruptness. These sword patterns seemed to possess life, flowing and flickering across the blade.
The ultimate violence of technology and the supreme inner essence of martial arts, in this moment, meshed perfectly together on this thirty-five-centimeter short blade.
Tesla stared at those dark-gold patterns, her pupils dilating a notch.
"What is this?" She leaned in a few steps closer. "This energy waveform... it's not any physical field we know of."
"Tai Xu Sword Qi—although I'd like to call it that, this shouldn't be normal Tai Xu Sword Qi."
Su Yu was telling the truth.
Tai Xu Sword Qi was essentially a means of controlling and using Honkai energy, but this world had no Honkai energy, and the energy within his own body didn't belong to Honkai energy either. If he had to put it a certain way, it was more akin to a kind of essential life energy.
"Tai Xu... what?"
"Just understand it as the internal force or true qi from wuxia novels." Su Yu didn't explain further.
Einstein pressed a button on the console.
In front of the blast-proof glass, the floor split open, and a slab of dark-gray defensive armor plating slowly rose up. It was a full half-meter thick, its surface covered in bulletproof coating.
"This is a scrapped armor plate used for testing Wotan's outer defenses." Einstein looked at Su Yu. "Give it a try."
Su Yu crouched slightly, exerting force from his waist, the power transmitting to his thighs, then spreading from his spine all the way to the right arm gripping the knife.
His breathing slowed in this moment, the Tai Xu Sword Qi circulating within his body.
He used no superfluous movements, only, in a most utterly unremarkable manner, swung that eighty-plus-kilogram heavy object forward and horizontally, borrowing the strength of his own waist and wrist.
The tip of the short blade cut through the air.
"Sssssss—"
There was no deafening crash of impact, nor any spray of sparks.
That extremely piercing sound was like using a red-hot iron wire to scald a block of cheese.
That half-meter-thick dark-gray armor plate, under this single swing of Su Yu's, was sliced diagonally into two halves.
The upper half slid down along the cut and slammed onto the metal floor with a "boom."
The cut surface was smooth as a mirror, its edges glowing dark red from the high heat, and a few drops of molten iron even dripped down the cross-section onto the floor, making a "sizzling" sound.
The entire laboratory went silent for two seconds.
Tesla stood there with her mouth open, forgetting to lower the wrench she'd raised.
Einstein walked over to the control panel and looked at the data leaping across the screen. Her fingers tapped a few times on the keyboard, calling up the complete mechanical analysis diagram of that strike a moment ago.
"Cutting depth: 500 millimeters, full penetration. Cutting-surface peak temperature: 2,740 degrees Celsius. Blade wear rate: 0.0003%."
She turned her head to look at Su Yu.
"Theoretically, the weapon in your hand, in a state of high-frequency oscillation and true qi infusion, is enough to cut through the main protective armor of that 'Wotan' below."
Su Yu looked at the short blade in his hand named [White Dwarf] and slowly exhaled a breath.
With this thing, if he really did encounter a Honkai Beast, he'd have the power to put up a fight—at least he wouldn't be like a weaponless target that could only passively take a beating.
Just as Su Yu was about to shut off the engine—
"Heh..."
From a dim corner of the laboratory came a lazy, hoarse chuckle carrying undisguised malice.
The sound appeared without any warning, as if the one making it had been hiding all along in the cracks of the shadows.
Mobius.
She wore that green white lab coat she never changed year-round, her long hair trailing down to her waist.
She walked without any sound, like a snake gliding over moss, silently slithering to a stop behind Su Yu.
The scent of some unknown mixture of chemicals bored into Su Yu's nostrils.
Su Yu stopped his motion of switching off the knife and turned his head.
Mobius stood less than half a meter away from him.
Those serpent eyes of hers gave off a ghostly green glow in this dim laboratory.
She didn't look at the severed armor plate; her gaze stayed fixed on the right arm with which Su Yu gripped the knife.
She extended a deathly-pale, slender finger.
That cold fingertip, separated by a layer of air, traced slowly, bit by bit, upward along the ridged muscle lines of Su Yu's right arm.
"Very sharp. And very heavy. It can even slice open that kind of tin can."
Mobius's voice was pressed very low, carrying a sticky quality that sent chills down the spine.
Her finger stopped at the position of Su Yu's shoulder.
"But, little lab rat... did you forget something most basic?"
Mobius circled around to Su Yu's front. She tilted her head up slightly, looking into Su Yu's eyes, the smile at the corners of her mouth widening to reveal sharp canine teeth.
"Slicing open a few motionless dead objects, and fighting against those real monsters that can move at supersonic speeds and wield forces of hundreds of tons at will—those are two entirely different things."
She extended a finger and gently flicked the spine of the [White Dwarf] in Su Yu's hand.
"This knife really won't break. It's perfect."
The smile vanished from Mobius's face, leaving only extreme coldness in those green eyes.
"But when you go to use this eighty-kilogram knife to hard-block the attacks of those monsters carrying terrifying kinetic energy..."
She leaned in close to Su Yu's ear.
"That enormous recoil force you can't dissipate at all will, within a tenth of a second, transmit along this knife's hilt into your wrist, your elbow, your shoulder..."
Mobius stepped back half a pace, using both hands to gesture an exploding motion.
"It'll shatter the bones of your arms, your meridians, and those muscle fibers you take such pride in, into an even... powder."
She cocked her head, her long green hair falling over her shoulder.
"If the formula that Welt fellow provided isn't wrong, then never mind a Herrscher—even the instantaneous output of a Honkai Emperor would be enough to grind you into powder."
Her voice was very soft.
"This human body of yours is still nowhere near enough."
The air pressure in the laboratory seemed to drop to freezing point because of these few words of hers.
Tesla bit her lip, staring hard at the wrench in her hand, offering no rebuttal.
Because she knew that what Mobius said was an unavoidable physical fact.
No matter how strong this weapon was, Su Yu's flesh-and-blood body ultimately had its limits.
When the backlash exceeded that threshold, the weapon would remain intact and unharmed, but the one wielding the knife would shatter into a puddle of mush.
Su Yu looked at Mobius's pair of ghostly-green serpent eyes.
He didn't retreat—not even the hand gripping the knife had the slightest tremor.
He knew better than anyone.
The first-stage Genetic Lock had merely unlocked the shackles of combat instinct. But those deeper stages—severing the pain-sensing nerves, forcibly controlling every single strand of muscle fiber to operate under overload...
He hadn't yet stepped into them.
Or rather, he didn't dare step into them lightly.
Because behind that lay endless backlash.
But he had no other choice.
That tsundere Queen who always had "human ants" on the tip of her tongue, and who at this moment was awkwardly wearing loungewear while snatching for the TV remote.
That fool who was always having nightmares and was now in her consciousness space desperately training the Tai Xu Sword Qi, drenched in sweat.
As long as he still stood here for even one more day, he would never let those disasters descending in the future tear apart once more the peace they had so painstakingly pieced together.
Su Yu withdrew his gaze.
His thumb pressed the gear switch at the base of the hilt.
The "hmmm—" high-frequency buzz instantly stopped. The ring of dark-red plasma heat wave on the blade extinguished along with it.
Su Yu's wrist flipped, spinning out an extremely crisp flourish of the knife.
He bent his right leg.
"Click."
The heavy [White Dwarf] was inserted with unerring accuracy into the specialized tactical binding on the outer side of his thigh.
The binding was pulled taut and straight under the terrifying weight, cinching tight against his thigh muscles.
Su Yu raised his head and looked toward Einstein and Tesla before the console, as well as Mobius standing off to the side.
"Thanks."
Su Yu's voice was very calm. There was no irritation at having his illusions punctured, nor any fervor of one who looked upon death as a return home.
"No matter what the backlash is like. At least for now, I have an entry ticket."
He turned around.
"If it really comes to that step, even if my bones shatter, there'll still be a layer of skin holding them together."
Su Yu walked out the blast-proof glass door and headed along the metal-grating passage in the direction of the elevator.
His retreating figure vanished into the rows of searchlight halos in that deep underground abyss.
Mobius watched that elevator door close shut again.
Her fingers tapped lightly twice against the edge of her white lab coat pocket.
In those pair of ghostly-green serpent eyes flashed an extremely complex emotion that even she herself hadn't noticed.
"What an... infuriating little lab rat."
The metal elevator door slowly closed before Su Yu.
As the car began to accelerate upward, that slight sensation of increased weight made his originally ramrod-straight back suddenly relax.
He didn't keep standing in the center of the elevator, but rather stepped back half a pace, leaning most of his body's weight against the cold metal car wall.
Su Yu lowered his head and reached out to tug at the specialized tactical binding on his right thigh.
The weight of the [White Dwarf] hadn't been discounted in the slightest.
Eighty-one point four kilograms—that number was just a few airy syllables coming out of Einstein's mouth, but hanging on his thigh at this moment, it was genuinely like a small solid iron anvil.
This thing was simply not something a normal human should be carrying around.
Just as he was pondering whether he should find a specialized briefcase to pack this thing away once he got back—
"Hmm."
Above his retina, that translucent light screen that usually only appeared when issuing a rip-off mission or sounding an alarm popped out without any warning.
Bright-red bold text occupied most of his field of vision.
[High-density unrecorded armament detected—]
[Material determination: high-purity Pseudo-Soulsteel mixed with otherworldly titanium alloy. Built-in high-frequency oscillation module.]
[Energy compatibility determination: extremely high.]
Then, the red text flickered twice and changed into a prompt carrying the System's usual sadistic sense of humor:
[Host detected engaging in an extremely stupid physical weight-bearing behavior.]
[Foster Father here is about to exert some effort~]
[Since this weapon's energy tier has reached recording standards, the System's "Armament Analysis and Storage" add-on module has been activated.]
[Do you wish to register this unnamed item into your personal panel and bind it?]
Su Yu looked at that line "extremely stupid physical weight-bearing" and rolled his eyes.
Without hesitation, he tapped the flickering [Yes] in the void.
This System had as much of a mouth on it as ever.
The System interface swiftly shifted.
[Please have the Host grip the hilt and inject a trace amount of Tai Xu Sword Qi to complete the dual-key binding of biological fingerprint and energy source.]
Su Yu straightened his body, his right hand once again pressing onto the coarse dark-gray binding hilt on the outer side of his thigh.
He took a deep breath, his mind stirring slightly.
The remaining wisp of Tai Xu true qi in his qi sea flowed through his meridians to his palm, then slowly seeped into that cold metal blade.
In the very instant the true qi touched the [White Dwarf]—
Su Yu saw a data stream composed of ghostly-blue translucent digits emerge on the surface of the pure black blade.
These data codes made of 0s and 1s climbed rapidly upward along the blade's edge, spiraling once around the blade body.
Then, those data streams, as if being sucked away by a vacuum cleaner, went along his arm and directly submerged into the System light screen hanging in midair.
[Analysis progress: 10%... 50%... 100%.]
[Analysis complete.]
[Equipment type: Super-heavy high-frequency oscillation tactical short blade.]
[Mass: 81.4 kg.]
[Physical status: Intact.]
[Binding confirmed: Su Yu.]
[Please have the Host name this weapon to complete the final registration procedure.]
"White Dwarf."
Su Yu silently recited the codename Tesla had bestowed upon it.
[Naming successful.]
[Detected that this weapon's volume/mass ratio severely affects the Host's daily activities. The System's initial Armament Storage Slot has been automatically opened (1/3).]
[Do you wish to store it in the space immediately? (After storing, the Host can materialize it into hand within 0.1 seconds through mental intent.)]
This time Su Yu even spared himself the button press, directly issuing the command to agree in his mind.
Almost in the very same millisecond—
Su Yu felt the outer side of his thigh suddenly lighten.
The tactical binding that had lost its support even let out a faint sound of fabric snapping back, hanging loosely and slackly against his trouser leg.
He looked down.
That pitch-black vicious weapon had completely vanished.
And in the lower-right corner of the System panel above his line of sight, there now appeared a dagger icon giving off a faint red glow.
Su Yu exhaled a long breath.
With this Armament Storage Slot, he wouldn't need to drag an iron lump around in plain sight every day, parading it about.
More importantly—
Su Yu looked at that icon lying quietly in the corner of the panel.
In any future battle—
Who would guard against a guy who looked completely empty-handed, with not the slightest weighed-down sluggishness even in his walk, being able to yank out—in the blink of an eye, straight from the void—a high-frequency oscillation knife weighing over a hundred and sixty jin?
This was equivalent to constantly holding in hand a trump card that could ignore physical distance and be slammed directly into the enemy's face.
"Ding—"
The elevator door slid open at the underground parking garage level of the top-floor entertainment building.
Su Yu straightened his clothes and stepped out of the car.
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