The air over the parade ground still hadn't recovered from the gravity crush that had, moments ago, nearly flattened everyone into paper.
On the asphalt, the web of cracks that had exploded outward with Sin Mal at its epicenter looked, under the vicious August sun, like a gigantic, dried-up spider's web.
Two military medics were hauling this troublemaking demolitions expert off toward the edge of the field.
The front of Sin's camouflage uniform had been scuffed into several holes, and the bloody line Cheng Lingshuang had whipped across her cheek with a branch had already scabbed over.
That said, the sky-defying, earth-defying ferocity in this "mad dog's" eyes had largely dissipated.
In its place was a kind of limpid stupidity and a profound questioning of the meaning of life.
The five hundred soldiers stood rooted in place like javelins, their formation now a good three grades tidier than when they'd first climbed off the trucks.
Not one of them dared so much as let out a fart.
Su Yu stood atop the elevated platform, sweeping a lofty gaze over these "favored sons of heaven" who had finally learned to shut their mouths.
"Next, allow me to introduce the head instructor who will oversee you for the coming month."
His voice wasn't loud, but the parade ground was so quiet you could hear the sand grains stirred up by the wind.
"Every subject, every assessment, every elimination standard of this Hell Selection will be decided solely and entirely by the head instructor. I'm only here to make the final call."
He paused.
In other words, for the next thirty days, the head instructor's word was law.
Five hundred pairs of eyes swiveled in unison to stare at the side of the platform.
Footsteps came from that direction.
Rhythmic, light, the interval between each step landing as precise as if measured by a metronome.
A figure ascended the stairs on the side of the platform.
Black low-heeled leather shoes struck the metal steps, ringing out a crisp "clack, clack, clack."
A white lace apron was tied at the waist, its bow knotted with meticulous care.
The hem of the black dress fell exactly two fingers' width below the knee, swaying gently with the rhythm of each step.
Rita Rossweisse walked over to Su Yu's side, cradling a clipboard in both hands, and gave a slight bow.
"Hello, everyone."
Her voice was soft and proper, an impeccably measured smile hanging at the corner of her lips.
"I am Rita Rossweisse. Starting today, I will serve as your head instructor. For the coming month, I hope you'll all take good care of me."
For three seconds, the parade ground was dead silent.
Then, a subtle commotion by the name of "absurdity" spread through the ranks like a virus running wild.
No one dared voice a protest, but the frantic glances these ace soldiers exchanged carried a staggering amount of information. Su Yu, standing up above, saw it all crystal clear.
In the front row, a crew-cut heavy-weapons gunner's lips were writhing furiously.
No sound came out, but Su Yu's second-stage Genetic Lock dynamic vision read his lip movements with pinpoint accuracy: "A maid? Are we opening a maid café here, or filming 'Return of the War God: My Personal Maid'?"
Beside him, a tall, lanky scout had knotted his eyebrows into a tangle, the veins on his neck throbbing wildly, clearly suppressing—with an enormous reserve of materialist faith—a "you've gotta be shitting me" that was about to burst out of his mouth.
In the back rows, several female soldiers exchanged a massive eye-roll.
One of the girls ground her back molars, ranting furiously in her head: These days all you need is a pretty face to get airdropped in as an instructor? Playing cosplay all the way into a military camp?!
However, the amateurs watch the spectacle, while the experts watch the craft.
The few genuinely top-tier close-combat specialists in the ranks wore expressions that grew heavier by the second.
Because on this parade ground, where even breathing felt oppressive, beneath that seemingly delicate maid outfit lurked an aura that sent chills down their spines—
A maid? Cosplay?
Don't make them laugh!
In their eyes, this was plainly a hydraulic clamp that could, at any moment, erupt with terrifying torque and snap an enemy's cervical spine in an instant!
Su Yu took in every one of these reactions.
He wasn't angry.
Because he'd anticipated it long ago.
This crowd had been ground into the dirt by his "magic" ten minutes prior; they no longer dared harbor the slightest doubt about Su Yu's combat prowess.
But Rita was different.
She wore a maid outfit, carried a little notebook, spoke in soft, gentle tones, and smiled like a warm-hearted big sister.
In the eyes of these ace soldiers who acknowledged only fists and the stench of gunsmoke, she was a vase that had wandered onto the wrong set.
He offered a moment of silent mourning in his heart for these green recruits. Compared to himself—a half-baked temporary commander—Rita Rossweisse was a true S-rank Valkyrie, the vice-captain of Schicksal's most elite squad, the Immortal Blades.
A vase?
Here's hoping you lot won't spend the coming month questioning your entire existence.
Su Yu turned his head and looked at Rita.
Rita happened to be looking at him too.
Their eyes met midair.
Su Yu said nothing.
He merely gave a slight nod.
The motion was tiny—so small the people below couldn't possibly notice.
But Rita saw it.
The curve of her lips didn't change; it remained that gentle, tender smile.
But her gaze had changed.
The change was subtle.
It was like a blade sheathed away, the cold glint of its edge leaking out through the gap.
Su Yu turned and raised a hand toward the rear of the parade ground.
"Bronie."
His voice went out through a hidden earpiece.
"Activate Test Tower Three. Crank up the intensity on her."
Far at the back of the parade ground, a gray metal defense tower that had stood silent suddenly emitted a low mechanical whir.
The heavy rotary shaft at the tower's top began to grind and spin, and a thick launch tube poked its head out from the armored casing.
The pitch-black muzzle aimed at the platform.
Aimed at Rita.
Bronie's voice came through the base's broadcast system, carrying her trademark, bubblegum-chewing, muffled drawl.
"Tower Three is in position. Round type: RPG-7 high-explosive anti-armor warhead. Boss, you sure? This thing's for physical over-delivery—it can blow the top clean off a main battle tank, y'know."
"I'm sure." Su Yu's face was expressionless.
"Righto."
There wasn't a trace of tension in Bronie's tone—she sounded like she was announcing "the takeout's here."
"Loaded and chambered. Ready to fire at any time."
Below, the CPUs in five hundred soldiers' brains short-circuited on the spot.
All they saw was the muzzle of that test tower flash once.
And then—and then—
"WHOOSH——!!"
A pillar of light trailing a deadly orange-red exhaust flame, accompanied by the shrill shriek of ripping air, blasted out of the launch tube fifty meters away!
Its target: the delicate figure atop the platform!
The parade ground erupted into chaos in an instant!
"GET DOWN——!"
"Have they lost their fucking minds?! Who uses live rounds in a drill?!"
"That's an RPG! Hit the deck, now!!"
Every hair on the front-row soldiers stood on end as they instinctively scrambled backward; a few with lightning reflexes had already thrown themselves flat, clutching their heads for dear life.
The people in the back rose onto their toes, faces caught somewhere between terror and total breakdown.
Fifty meters.
The muzzle velocity of an RPG-7 is roughly three hundred meters per second.
From launch to impact: less than 0.2 seconds.
Zero point two seconds.
What kind of concept is 0.2 seconds? In that span of time, the human brain can't even finish executing a single complete "oh shit" command.
But Rita moved.
She set down the clipboard in her hand.
The motion was light, natural—like setting down a teacup at a tea party.
The clipboard hadn't even hit the ground yet.
Her right hand had already lifted.
The palm, clad in a white lace glove, opened its five fingers, facing forward.
The warhead arrived.
That high-explosive anti-armor round—enough to blow an armored vehicle into scrap—swept in wrapped in a scorching blast wave and the acrid stench of gunpowder, leaving an orange-red afterimage burned onto everyone's retinas.
Rita's palm pressed against the side of the warhead.
Not a head-on block.
The side.
In the very instant of contact, her body began to spin.
The toe of her right foot pressed against the metal floor of the platform, and her entire body pivoted on that point, spinning at high speed.
One rotation.
Two rotations.
Three rotations.
The warhead's kinetic energy was stripped away, redirected, and unloaded layer by layer within the spin.
That terrifying force, powerful enough to tear steel apart, was transformed by some method utterly beyond human comprehension into rotational centrifugal force, then absorbed bit by bit into her muscles and bones until it was completely dissipated.
The black-and-white maid skirt flared open violently in the airflow her spin generated.
The black fabric and white petticoat bloomed outward in overlapping layers, tracing a perfect circle atop the platform.
The edge of the skirt was blown ramrod-straight by the airflow, like a flower blossoming in a storm.
The spinning stopped.
The toe of Rita's foot had carved a shallow, high-temperature arc-shaped scar into the heavy metal platform.
Her body settled firmly, without so much as a tremor.
The skirt was still fluttering lightly from inertia, and the ribbon of the white apron traced one final graceful arc through the air before draping neatly back down at her waist.
Rita bowed slightly and performed, once again, a flawless maid's curtsy to those below.
Then, she raised her right hand from her side, palm facing upward.
That RPG high-explosive anti-armor warhead—the one that should have leveled the platform to the ground—now lay quietly in her white-lace-gloved palm like an obedient toy.
The warhead was completely intact.
It hadn't detonated.
On the parade ground.
Five hundred people.
Not a single one made a sound.
Even their breathing had stopped.
That kind of silence wasn't due to strict military discipline.
It was the collective blue-screen crash produced when the processors of their brains were thoroughly fried by this scene.
The crew-cut bruiser who'd just scorned the "maid" had his mouth gaping wide enough to fit an ostrich egg, his jaw literally dislocated without him even realizing it.
The lanky scout beside him had stopped knotting his eyebrows, because every nerve in his entire face had already gone numb.
In the back row, a ponytailed female soldier's stainless-steel military canteen dropped with a "clang" onto her instep, water splashing all over the ground, yet she didn't so much as furrow a brow—she just stared, transfixed, at the platform.
"Ho... holy shit..."
It was some luckless soul in the ranks—faith shattered—who was the first to squeeze out those two words.
And immediately, those two words were like Pandora's box flung open, triggering a nuclear-fission-scale explosion across the five-hundred-man formation.
"Holy shit holy shit holy shit!"
"She fucking... caught an RPG bare-handed?! Are we filming an anti-Japanese soap opera or something?!"
"It didn't detonate?! She rubbed it out with her hand?! Newton's coffin lid can't hold him down anymore!"
"Is this something a carbon-based life form can even do?! Even Yan Shuangying would come over and offer her a cigarette!"
"Coach, I want to learn that!!"
Su Yu stepped forward twice, coming to the very edge of the platform.
He braced both hands on the railing, holding back a laugh as he looked down at the five hundred faces below, their worldviews smashed to smithereens.
"Now."
His voice wasn't loud, but it instantly suppressed every gasp of shock.
"Is there anyone among you who still wishes to question the head instructor's qualifications?"
The clamor on the parade ground came to an abrupt halt.
The five hundred people looked at one another.
And then.
"Snap."
The sound of the first pair of military boots clicking together.
"Snap." The second pair.
"Snap-snap——"
Like dominoes, from the front rows to the back, five hundred pairs of military boots slammed onto the asphalt in nearly the same second.
Five hundred people, standing ramrod-straight.
Five hundred right hands rose in unison, delivering, toward that woman in the maid outfit, the most forceful salute of their entire military careers!
"Commander, sir!! Head Instructor, ma'am!!"
The roar rattled the leaves on the few roadside trees at the edge of the parade ground.
Su Yu gazed down at this uniform sea of camouflage below.
Ten minutes ago, this crowd of soldiers had been mocking him as the "scrawny-dog commander." Five minutes ago, he'd taught them a lesson in humility with a gravity field.
Now, they'd witnessed with their own eyes a dainty little maid perform "catching a missile bare-handed."
Their worldviews had been torn down and rebuilt three times over the past ten minutes.
Enough. The timing was about right.
Su Yu nodded in satisfaction. "Very good."
His gaze swept across every sweat-soaked face.
In those eyes, the contempt, arrogance, and disdain of before had been thoroughly flushed down the drain.
In their place was a fervent light—a mixture of awe for absolute power and an intense, burning craving for it.
They wanted to know whether they, too, could train themselves into monsters that trampled physics underfoot in this "new world."
This light was exactly what Su Yu wanted.
"Starting today, the thirty-day Hell Selection officially begins."
Su Yu's voice sank completely, radiating a bloody cruelty.
"Thirty days from now, only those still alive and standing on this parade ground will earn the right to know just what kind of thing the enemy you'll face in the future truly is."
He turned and stepped back, yielding the main stage to Rita.
Rita gently set the still-smoking high-explosive warhead in her palm onto the steel railing of the platform, like arranging an ornament, and casually patted the ash off her lace gloves.
She picked the clipboard back up off the ground and flipped open the first page with her fingertip.
"Well then, everyone."
Her voice was still soft, still proper. And in those wine-red eyes still hung that impeccable maid's smile.
But at this very moment, the five hundred battle-hardened soldiers below, looking at that smile, felt only a chill spread across their backs, numbness creeping from their tailbones all the way up to the crowns of their heads.
Death was smiling at them.
"Please, everyone, brace yourselves mentally."
Rita closed the clipboard, cradled it elegantly against her chest, and parted her red lips:
"Welcome to the new world."
Standing at the rear of the platform, Su Yu—who'd thought he could now bow out having accomplished his mission—suddenly, without any warning, had a whole row of System prompt windows flash across his retinas, blinking with dazzling golden light.
[Ding! Main Mission Three: 'Starfire Furnace' now officially open!]
[Mission Description: Over the course of one month, under the devil's selection of head instructor Rita Rossweisse, screen out humanity's first batch of elite Kindling capable of standing against the Honkai in the present era.]
[Mission Reward: A tiered comprehensive evaluation will be conducted based on the number and quality of qualified candidates in the final selection. Should the final rating reach S-rank or above, the ultimate strategic reward will be issued—[Blueprint for the Core Formula of the first-stage Genetic Lock Serum]!]
Immediately after, two more highly oppressive new mission bars popped up one after another below—
[Ding! New side mission triggered: 'Rebuild the Skyward Major Dream Team'!]
[Mission Description: The continuation of a Bond. Assist Rita Rossweisse in unearthing suitable candidates in this alternate world, and rebuild her own spearhead squad—the alternate-world version of the Immortal Blades.]
Ohh, so it's about the Immortal Blades and the Skyward Major, huh!
Anyone who didn't know better would've thought it was about that golden Pikachu—the one who caused a mess in his youth and got taught a lesson, kept his head down in middle age for a few days before jumping around again and getting a friend killed, then in old age couldn't find the elixir of immortality, got caught red-handed by a snake and dragged into the Grail War, got his own Master killed, then incarnated and lay low for ten years, got sanctioned twice by the redhead Jiahao, got treated like takeout delivery by a good girl, migrated to the mobile game only to overwork himself to death from crunch, and still had to get cursed at for slacking off.
I'm telling you, put a little more effort into making your story believable—you've already got a death where a Servant hesitated and couldn't draw their Noble Phantasm and got their elbow chopped clean off, so why don't you just say a Servant tossed a key around carelessly and got their own treasury locked up?
Ohh.
So it's saying Teacher Rita went weak in the knees again, and Miss Goose prettily turned invisible too—Teacher Rita winning the Skyward War is only a matter of time——
[Ding! Enhanced side mission 3 triggered: 'The Personal Maid's Secret Tutoring'! This mission requires the Host to trigger it voluntarily, but your foster father advises you'd best not give it up.]
[Mission Description: The strongest hunters aren't raised in greenhouses. Over the coming month, under the strict restriction of a 'total ban on the use of any active special skills (including gravity fields, etc.),' the Host must, relying solely on bodily instinct and a sense of danger, face Rita's inescapable 'lethal assassination tutoring' around the clock. Please achieve 'the student surpassing the master' in the assassination graduation exam one month from now!]
[Mission Reward: Upon completion, the proficiency of the Host's special skill [Shadow Stalk] will receive a massive, leaps-and-bounds boost! It will further greatly raise the Bond level with Rita Rossweisse!]
Looking at the chain of mission bars cascading down before him like a waterfall—especially that last one, bolded and marked red, 'round-the-clock lethal assassination'—
Su Yu felt a wave of numbness crawl across his scalp, and even a strong sense of impending balding, as though a midlife crisis were bearing down on him.
He drew in a sharp breath and ranted furiously in his head.
Good grief, so this System figures my life is too tough to end and I'm still not grinding hard enough, huh?
Meaning: by day, he had to be a miserable game producer sweating it out at his downtown studio, working himself half to death—burning the midnight oil—over the progress of 'Honkai Impact 3rd' and players clamoring for updates.
And after finally toughing it out until nightfall, he still had to rush all the way back overnight to this special-training base in the middle of nowhere, to serve as this scheming maid's 'live target for assassination practice'?!
He wished he could split one minute into two to spend it—even the donkey on a production team wouldn't be run around the clock like this!
Su Yu let out a sigh utterly devoid of the will to live.
This time—this time he was truly, purely blessed.
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