"Bang! Bang bang!"
Kiana was clearly a materialist warrior who refused to believe in the supernatural.
Gritting her teeth, she leveled the [Skyward Destroyer] at Raven and unleashed another savage torrent of energy.
Then—
The beam was severed in midair once again by that invisible Wall of Sighs, cut clean off without leaving so much as a smear of light pollution.
On the other side, Raven, standing in the shadows, furrowed her brow.
Her left hand snapped upward, and three pitch-black raven-feather blades tore through the air, curving along a lethal arc straight for Su Yu's throat.
"Ting, ting, ting."
The blades struck a pane of glass that wasn't there, slid feebly off, and clattered to the ground with a crisp, mocking chime.
Raven's deep-violet eyes narrowed to slits.
She stared at the black-haired man across from her, so infuriatingly relaxed. "Is this your doing?"
"If I really had the power to yank anyone's network cable whenever I pleased, I'd be sitting in the boss's chair back at World Serpent HQ, sipping tea."
Su Yu shrugged.
Since even the System had stamped its seal of approval on this "World Barrier" being an absolute defense, why bother holding back?
"Clang."
He casually tossed the heavy [White Dwarf] high-frequency dagger to the ground, then did something that made everyone present suck in a sharp breath—
He simply released his second-stage Genetic Lock, shoved both hands into his pockets, and strode toward Raven with long, easy steps.
Raven's body instinctively backed up half a step.
Su Yu walked up to that invisible midfield line and stopped.
He extended his right hand, holding it suspended in the air.
Palm flat, he pressed it forward with force.
The muscles at his fingertips deformed slightly—sure enough, they pressed against a wall that had no form at all.
"Don't be nervous, Miss Cioara."
Through the wall, Su Yu offered Raven a gentle, harmless smile.
"It's obvious—in this Schrödinger-esque state of physics, neither of us can kill the other. Everyone's perfectly safe."
Raven hadn't earned her reputation as a top-tier mercenary and assassin for nothing.
After the initial shock, her emotional management system came back online fast.
Since force had become a mere decoration and the dimensional wall couldn't be breached, the only thing of value left now was one thing—intelligence.
She straightened up again, lowered her muzzle, and regarded Su Yu through the invisible wall with an icy gaze.
"Since neither of us can act…"
"Then let's talk about something else. Do you know what that thing standing behind you is? That's the Herrscher of the Void—the one who nearly destroyed the world."
A classic pressure tactic.
An attempt to seize the initiative at the negotiating table by dredging up the opposing camp's "dark history."
"Stop right there."
Su Yu raised a hand and cut her off without mercy.
"Miss Cioara, spare me the cheap interrogation script."
"If you want to pry any useful information out of my mouth, then trade me something with real substance from your World Serpent. Getting something for nothing—that trick doesn't work on me."
Raven fell silent for two seconds.
"Why should I believe you? And how am I supposed to confirm the intel you feed me isn't just something you made up on the spot?"
Su Yu withdrew his hand from the invisible wall and tucked it back into his pocket.
"Simple."
His gaze cut through the shadow of his hood, piercing straight into Raven's eyes.
"Because what I know is far, far more than your impoverished imagination can conjure."
Su Yu paused, his tone light and offhand, as if reading off a menu.
"Like your past."
"Like that little island villa you scraped and saved so hard to buy."
"And of course, that group of children you took in over in Nagazora."
Raven's breathing, in that instant, stopped cold.
"Who would've guessed?" Su Yu leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. "The infamous World Serpent officer, the one who kills without blinking, is in private the most beloved teacher to that flock of children back at the nest."
"Miss Raven, surely you wouldn't want… your children to find out that the money buying their candy is commission stained with blood?"
Raven's eyes went wide.
The face beneath the hood drained of all color in an instant, veins bulging on the back of the hand gripping her gun.
If not for this World Barrier holding her back, she would have charged over at any cost right now to tear out Su Yu's throat with her teeth.
The bottom line she would give her life to protect was laid out in this stranger's mouth as transparently as a public Wikipedia page!
"You…" Raven's voice trembled. "Who the hell are you?!"
"Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is that I know you aren't really as devoted to World Serpent as you pretend." Su Yu spoke slowly and deliberately. "You couldn't care less about that damned Project STIGMA, and you care even less whether all of humanity lives or dies. The only things you care about are yourself and that group of children back at the 'nest.' Am I right?"
Raven's gaze turned cold and sharp as a blade in an instant, her killing intent almost condensing into something physical enough to pierce that wall.
"So? You want to use those kids to threaten me? Or are you trying to turn me?"
"No, no, no. Don't get the wrong idea." Su Yu waved a hand. "I'm a man who values integrity above all in business. Like I said, this is simply a fair exchange of intelligence—you ask me, I ask you."
Raven drew in a deep breath, forcibly pressing her wildly pounding heart back into her chest.
"What do you want to know? And what chips are you prepared to trade for it?"
"Tell me the current situation in Arc City." Su Yu threw out the question. "In exchange—you get to ask me one question of your own, anything you like."
Raven let out a cold laugh, as if she'd heard some kind of joke. "How do I make sure you're not conning me?"
"Just as you fear that, Miss Cioara, I'm also afraid you'll slip me false intel."
Su Yu glanced at the [System Countdown] flashing frantically across his retina.
Time was running out. He had to crush that core before the countdown hit zero, or they'd all be buried along with this space.
"As a token of good faith for the deal, I'll throw in one piece of information for free first." Su Yu pointed at the purple Honkai core hovering dead center in the space. "The moment I shatter that thing, this rift will close, and you can return to your own world completely unharmed."
Raven stared intently at Su Yu's micro-expressions.
As a top-tier mercenary who had read countless people, her human polygraph delivered its verdict: this man wasn't lying.
She clenched her teeth. "Fine. I accept your deal. What do you want to know?"
"World Serpent's Project STIGMA—how far along is it in Arc City?"
Raven's gaze flickered, then she tugged the corner of her mouth into a mocking smirk. "Since you already know everything, why bother asking me?"
"Three days from now, there's going to be a massive surprise in the city center. A Honkai energy bomb will arrive right on schedule, and those inferior specimens who can't activate the Stigmata gene will become fertilizer for the new world—Jackal's exact words."
"What?!"
Kiana, who had been standing at the back listening the whole time, bristled instantly.
She lunged forward a step and slammed into the invisible wall with a "bang."
Her heterochromatic eyes blazed with disbelieving fury. "Detonate a bomb? Use an entire city's worth of lives as a filter?! You people treat human life like weeds! Doing something like this—doesn't your conscience ache at all?!"
Raven looked at the impotently raging white-haired girl, and the corner of her mouth curled into a stinging sneer.
"The Herrscher of the Void, who nearly destroyed half the world, standing here lecturing me about the disregard for human life? That's honestly the finest joke I've heard all year. Or is it that, after hiding behind a man for so long, you've actually started to think of yourself as some pure little white rabbit?"
"You—!"
The words drove with surgical precision into Kiana's deepest scar.
Her face went ghost-white in an instant, her body trembling violently.
"Enough."
Su Yu reached out and clamped a hand down on Kiana's shoulder.
He pulled her behind him and looked back at Raven. "I understand. So, in exchange—the flow of time here is completely different from your world. No matter how long we've been dawdling in here, by the time you get back, maybe only a few seconds will have passed on your end."
Raven's eyes brightened.
For her, this was excellent news.
"Very fair." She narrowed her eyes. "And then? What else do you want to ask?"
"My last question." Su Yu fixed his eyes on Raven's. "Where are those Valkyries of the Immortal Blades now? Don't tell me they all became rations—I won't believe it. Especially that one inside… quite pretty, with a rather nasty streak. The maid."
Of course Su Yu knew exactly where Rita had gone—after all, every night he had to endure a round of that scheming maid's assassination training.
Asking this question, on the surface, was asking after Rita's whereabouts. In truth, it was a roundabout way of concealing the fact that Rita was already on his side, while also probing into the very thing that had been weighing on Rita's mind.
The whereabouts of the Immortal Blades squad.
This time Raven genuinely revealed a look of intrigue, though it came off a little stiff on that pale face.
"You mean Rita Rossweisse? Heh. That woman's life turned out to be as tough as her tongue."
"They really were about to be swallowed up by World Serpent, but someone stuck their oar in along the way—Raiden Mei, who ran off with that whole pack of Immortal Blades Valkyries."
"Before she left, she detonated the residual energy of the Herrscher Core and created an EMP disruption that blanketed the entire city. World Serpent's intelligence network is now fretting over a screen full of static snow."
"Right now, that bunch is holed up in some sewer in Arc City—nobody even knows which one."
The moment Kiana heard the name "Raiden Mei," she gasped in a great, ragged breath, as if all the strength had drained out of her, and her eyes instantly brimmed with the light of overjoyed surprise.
"Mei… Mei's all right?"
Earlier, from Rita's account, she had already learned that Mei had come to Arc City searching for her whereabouts.
But Rita's memory only reached the moment when Rita was surrounded by the Death Web and Mei arrived on the scene.
Now, hearing from Raven's mouth that Mei was safe, Kiana let out a breath of relief. [System Notice: Countdown remaining: 10 seconds.]
Su Yu glanced at the red light flashing wildly across his retina.
"There's still plenty of wealth-management wisdom about island mortgages I'd love to discuss with you in detail, but sadly—the internet café's about to lose power."
Su Yu took a step back and raised his left hand.
"I'll report everything here to the Lord, exactly as it happened," Raven said coldly.
"That's your job. Be my guest."
Su Yu's left hand suddenly clenched.
The Star of Eden's Mimic Black Hole took shape in an instant at the very center of the space, its terrifying gravity locking directly onto that suspended Honkai energy core!
"But before we part, I'd like to give you one last piece of advice, free of charge—"
Accompanying Su Yu's motion, the purple core began to emit the sound of splintering under unbearable strain.
The entire spherical space began to shudder violently, like a cardboard box on the verge of collapse.
A wild wind whipped up Raven's cloak.
Amid the sounds of the collapsing space, Su Yu's voice carried clearly to her ears.
"Cioara, Project STIGMA brings nothing but destruction. No one can make flowers bloom out of hell."
"Think about those children in your orphanage. If you truly want to give them a future, then stop being a puppet on strings for Kevin—that severe refrigerator case."
Crack—!!
With the gravity field's ultimate compression, the Honkai energy core shattered with a deafening blast!
Accompanied by a nauseating whirl of the world spinning, the entire dark-purple space began to break apart like a smashed mirror.
The invisible wall shattered, and weightlessness swept over them in an instant.
"Run!"
Su Yu grabbed Kiana's wrist and spun around, sprinting toward the exit.
In the shadows behind him, Raven took one long, deep look at Su Yu's retreating back, lingering not a moment longer.
In the last instant before she vanished, her gaze remained too complicated to read.
"Boom—!"
The moment Su Yu and Kiana burst out of the rift, they found that the special space housing the overpass was also collapsing wildly.
The massive asphalt roadway snapped apart like a biscuit, tumbling into the void below.
"Lord Su Yu, your manner of exit really is full of surprises."
Rita!
This flawless royal maid was, at this very moment, treating that ten-million-dollar Maybach like a rally car.
The heavy black body carved a wild drift along the crumbling edge of the broken bridge, sliding to a steady stop broadside right in front of Su Yu and Kiana, its doors flung wide open.
The two of them scrambled and tumbled into the back seat.
"Hold on tight."
Rita floored the Throttle.
The Maybach's engine let out a deafening roar, tires slipping at the edge as it wrenched itself free from the brink of the collapsing Abyss.
As the space behind them imploded utterly like a black hole, the Maybach shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, crashing headlong through the twisted boundary.
"Splash—"
Torrential rain poured down, and cold water pounded against the windows once more.
Neon flickered, and from the distance came the familiar wail of Arc City's police sirens.
They were back.
Inside the cabin, all four of them let out a long breath.
Only Kevin, in the passenger seat, was still out cold.
Kiana slumped into the leather seat and wiped the cold sweat from her face.
She looked over at Su Yu, who was straightening the collar of his suit, her expression conflicted.
"Those things you said to that woman assassin at the end…" Kiana bit her lip. "Were you trying to move her with grand principles, to make her turn over a new leaf?"
"Move her?"
Su Yu glanced at Kiana as if she were an alien and shook his head.
"Don't be naive, Miss Kaslana. A top assassin who's clawed her way out of piles of corpses has a heart as hard as soul-steel. How could a few spoonfuls of my chicken-soup pep talk make her defect on the spot?"
Kiana was stunned. "Then why did you say all that to her?"
Su Yu leaned back comfortably into his seat and let out a long sigh.
"I was just stuffing junk data into her brain. Overloading her with intel she can't comprehend but that cuts right to the bone."
"When she goes back now, even if she wants to file a report, the underlying logic in her head is probably going to stay scrambled for a while."
Su Yu turned his head and looked into Kiana's heterochromatic eyes.
"I wasn't trying to move her—I was using this method to throw her off balance, to buy Mei and the Immortal Blades squad, hiding out there in the dark, even one more day of breathing room in safety."
In the front, Rita, who was driving, snapped her eyes wide open through the rearview mirror.
The ever-unflappable head maid's fingers clenched suddenly around the steering wheel.
"Lord Su Yu, did you just say… Miss Mei, and the members of the Immortal Blades?!"
"Let's do a proper debrief once we're back."
Su Yu glanced at Kevin, still unconscious in the passenger seat, and rubbed his brow wearily.
"Rita, drive us back to Anti-Entropy Entertainment. There's been more than enough excitement for one night, and Mr. Kevin clearly needs a soft bed right about now."
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