Countdown to the Honkai's Arrival — 90 days.
Anti-Entropy Headquarters.
The conference table was covered by a single seamless holographic projection panel, dim blue data-light flowing slowly beneath its surface.
Rita stood in the briefing area at the front of the long table.
She wasn't wearing her maid outfit today — instead, a dark gray Anti-Entropy standard-issue training uniform.
"Mech simulation training began seventy-two hours ago."
"The first batch of soldiers injected with first-stage Genetic Lock serum — two hundred and seventeen in total — have all entered simulation chambers four through seven at the base for basic Titan mech operation training."
"Current average proficiency in soldier-mech coordination has reached C+ rank, with twelve trainees reaching B-rank. We project that before the countdown hits sixty days, the first batch of Titan pilots will be able to form a platoon-level combat unit."
Tesla, seated at the far end of the table, tapped her pen cap against the tabletop twice. "C+ rank? Weren't you still floundering in D-rank mud last week? Rita, did you secretly lower the training assessment standards?"
Rita set the remote control pen down on the table and pointed at the red bar on the three-dimensional column chart labeled "Sin Mal."
"If you strip her and Susannah Manatt's scores out, the average really is D+."
"Yesterday she tore the entire left arm off her instructor's mech in the simulation chamber. This morning she soloed a Chariot — without activating her Genetic Lock."
Tesla clicked her tongue, tapping her pen cap again — noticeably faster this time.
"There's also progress on the mass-production battle armor project." She cut straight in, slapping her own holographic screen dark and seizing remote control from Dr. Mei.
A three-dimensional exploded diagram of a suit of battle armor rose above the table — outer plating, inner lining, weapon interfaces, energy circuits, each marked out with different colored lines.
"I've finished analyzing all the combat data from the three of you — Su Yu, Rita, and Kiana. Mei's reverse-engineering is going faster than expected. The first production-model battle armor is about to roll off the line."
"When that happens, it won't just be you three fighting solo in armor anymore. New recruits will be able to take their own battle armor into the field too."
Dr. Mei only added flatly, "We need more combat data. Fighting Honkai Beasts in a simulation chamber and facing a Honkai Emperor in reality are two completely different things."
As she said this, her gaze swept across Su Yu's face before dropping back to her notes.
Mobius sat by the window.
Outside, the underground base's artificial greenery swayed gently, its fake leaves stirred by the climate-control airflow.
She pushed an electronic report to the center of the table.
The report cover bore the logo of Arc City's Public Health Center.
It was supposed to be a routine vaccination statistics chart, but Mobius casually dragged the mouse, and a hidden layer beneath it was suddenly pulled up.
It was a heat map showing the citywide distribution of "Honkai energy antibody serum."
The entire city map was layered over in deep blue, with only a few scattered patches at the edges still left unlit, pale white.
"I mixed it in under the pretext of pushing a new flu vaccine. Current citywide serum coverage is at seventy percent."
Above the conference table, the hologram Su Yu had projected took over the display.
It was a scrolling screenshot of comments from miHoYo Studio's official account, moving slowly enough for everyone to read the highlighted, boxed top replies.
The AR device and the concept video for Ordinal Scale had been released forty-eight hours ago, and views across the internet had already broken a hundred million.
[No wonder the power went out at Arc City Tower that night — Old Su was cooking up a bombshell! This one's flying way over everyone's heads!]
That comment had twelve thousand upvotes, paired with a shocked "grandpa on the subway with his phone" meme.
[Even a farm donkey wouldn't work this hard! Honkai Impact 3rd barely just launched its servers — and Old Su's already dropping a full holographic AR system on us? Is his whole dev team cultivating immortality, or does the man himself just never sleep?!]
[Insider here! Old fans already know — Su originally wanted to make a fully immersive full-dive VR version of Honkai Impact 3rd, but reality beat that idea out of him, so he shipped a cross-platform game instead. Word from people in the know is the holographic version was already in internal gray-box testing! Never expected the old bastard to turn around and pull AR and Ordinal Scale out of thin air anyway — this is straight-up Outclassed by None!]
[Cool is definitely cool — hacking apart Honkai Beasts in real life. But the exercise load involved is basically a death sentence for shut-ins... you need to bring your own stamina just to play this game, waaah!!]
Su Yu pushed the final page of comments to the center of the screen.
It was a screenshot from an anonymous group chat of rival companies, in which someone had posted three whole rows of exclamation points, followed by one final line —
"Is miHoYo actually a game company? Since when do they do technological revolutions on the side? Did they get investment from three-body aliens or something?"
Someone in the conference room couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing.
It was Bronie, followed immediately by the pop of a bursting bubble gum bubble.
Siegfried propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "So, Su Yu — are you planning to put your focus for the next phase into this VR device and the game?"
Su Yu nodded.
Siegfried's brow furrowed.
He didn't press further, just pulled his hand back and leaned against his chair.
Su Yu exchanged a glance with Welt.
Welt made a "please, begin your performance" gesture toward Su Yu.
Bronie, sitting in the corner, tugged at her hood, balled up the wrapper of the gum she'd chewed flavorless, and casually sank it in the wastebasket at the corner of the table with a three-pointer.
"These past few days, the Boss, Mr. Welt, and I have gone through the feasibility of the AR project from start to finish."
"The conclusion is hardcore — this isn't a question of whether we can pull it off. It's a matter of we have to pull it off, no matter what."
She slid half out of her seat and pushed a palm-sized holographic panel onto the table.
Several red numbers appeared on the projection panel — the income and expenditure flow of "Emotion Points" from the System's backend, provided by Su Yu.
"Right now, all of our combat strength and technology share one common lifeline."
Bronie tapped the red number with her fingertip.
"Emotion Points."
"And the most direct channel for producing them — no surprise — is the Honkai IP. First and foremost, Honkai Impact 3rd."
"To put it bluntly, this game is the only mining rig keeping every single one of us alive."
"But if the apocalypse actually arrives —"
Her fingertip swiped again.
A line of simulated projection data appeared on the panel: once the apocalypse went public, Honkai Impact 3rd's daily active users were projected to crash off a cliff.
"Honkai Beasts openly tearing down buildings and eating people in the streets, the whole city in a panic."
"And our game just happens to overlap head-on with the things crawling out of those rifts — from monster designs to the entire worldview."
"Everyone, what do you think Honkai Impact 3rd would get flamed as at that point? It'd get torched as an anti-human prophecy book on the spot!"
"And the more practical problem is — if social order collapses and people are fighting with knives just to grab a pack of instant noodles, who's going to have the leisure to sit in the rubble and pull out their phone to farm the Abyss for you?"
"At that point, our entire tech tree and our means of fighting the Honkai would break off at the root."
Welt laid his palm flat on the table, cutting in. "That's the first problem."
He raised his other hand, holding up a second finger.
"The second problem is actually the deadliest one of all."
"Everyone here — on the day the Honkai fully arrives, this super-city of Arc City with a resident population over ten million, all these citizens in the streets — how exactly do you plan to evacuate them?"
Kiana scratched at her white hair, tilting her head. "Can't we just organize a large-scale drill?"
Su Yu didn't answer the naive question directly. He simply tapped the control panel, expression flat.
Dense red arrows bloomed across the satellite map, simulating population flow routes radiating outward from the city center.
Within seconds, every main road turned solid red, and the ring elevated highway snarled into a deep-purple knot.
"Ten million people migrating simultaneously — the stampede panic alone would wipe out tens of thousands. You could throw the entire military district at it and it still wouldn't help. Forget about drills."
Tesla tapped her pen cap against the table impatiently across from him. "Then what about using the Skyward Shield to physically cut off the battlefield by force? Raise the energy barrier, lock down the Honkai Beasts' movement range, and we grind it out with them inside the barrier."
Su Yu swept a hand across the projection in an arc.
"That tactic is theoretically viable."
"But it has one fatal bug."
"How do we predict where exactly the Honkai will land in advance? With Anti-Entropy's current level of technology, the wide-area Honkai energy detector can only give us two hours' warning at most."
"Two hours — is that enough to clear out the office workers in a few city-center CBD blocks?"
"Once the Skyward Shield comes down, what happens to the ordinary people caught inside its range? We can't exactly leave them in the arena to get stomped into meat patties as a buffet for Chariot."
He paused.
"And ultimately, once the apocalypse is exposed, the chain reaction will be far more terrifying than we've estimated."
"The Honkai invasion won't come in just one wave."
"If by luck we survive the first wave, and a second one comes — the citizens will realize this isn't some once-in-a-century accident, but a disaster that keeps resetting and repeating."
"At that point, despair will dismantle all social order from the inside."
No one in the room spoke.
Siegfried's dark blue eyes swept from Su Yu to Welt, then back from Welt to Su Yu.
"So — you, Welt, and Bronie, the three sharpest minds here — what kind of demonic scheme did you three cook up?"
Su Yu pressed the button in his hand.
The hologram at the center of the room switched abruptly.
A lightweight three-dimensional structural diagram of AR glasses hovered in midair, labeled with a product code name: Skyward Eye.
Alongside it hung the cover page of a game proposal: Ordinal Scale.
A demo video began to play.
In the footage, Kiana, wearing the AR glasses, stood on a simulated map of ruins.
She drew her Greatsword in a sudden motion, locking onto a holographic Chariot in the open ground ahead.
Viewed through the glasses' built-in camera UI viewfinder, the holographic Honkai Beast had a prominent health bar hovering over its head.
At the edge of the vision field, a weapon wheel, the character's breathing rate, even a stamina gauge, all ticked in real time.
But from the "real-world bystander view" outside the frame, everyone just saw Kiana thrashing and slashing wildly like someone in the terminal stage of chuunibyou.
Yet with every swing of her sword, the projected Honkai Beast let out the sound of bones genuinely shattering, bursting into a spray of dazzling data-light particles.
Siegfried leaned forward even further.
He watched the screen, his lips moving once or twice.
"This game... does actually look pretty cool. But I still don't understand — what does this have to do with evacuating ten million people that you were just talking about?"
"You're not going to tell me that releasing this AR game will somehow let us hoodwink millions of citizens right under their noses and sneak the whole lot of them out of the city, are you?"
Su Yu turned to face Siegfried.
He nodded.
Siegfried's expression froze for half a second.
"We're going to tell this city's ten million people one gigantic lie."
Su Yu began speaking.
"There's only one core objective. Under the absolute precondition of never triggering a stampede or a riot, we're going to either empty out Arc City's ten-million-strong population or lock it safely into a vault."
"Talking to them about the end of the world, about humanity's grand cause — that won't save anyone. We're going to use the things they know best to manipulate them."
He held up three fingers.
"Profit, administrative authority, and physical isolation."
"I'm going to turn this entire city into one giant real-world AR game field."
"Step one: strip away fear. I want every citizen to become completely desensitized to the concept of 'Honkai.'"
He glanced at Bronie, chewing gum in the corner.
"The first internal blind test for the devices — only five thousand slots. Purely random selection, not for sale, given away free. Those five thousand lucky people will be our first batch of cyber lab rats."
"Once they get the devices, they'll head out onto the streets."
"To the passersby not wearing glasses, those five thousand people will look like complete cyber lunatics."
"They'll be throwing punches at thin air at the busiest intersections, rolling around dodging in subway stations, even fighting real-life PvP in the street over who gets the first kill on a monster nobody else can see."
"Don't worry about managing them — humanity's urge to share will make them post the first-person recordings online on their own."
"Those Honkai Beast models rendered so realistically they'll cause frame drops, the visceral hit sound effects, and the most fatal detail of all — virtual currency dropped from kills that can be cashed out directly for real money."
"The concept that you can actually make money playing a game — once that's confirmed, scalpers outside will scalp those five thousand beta activation codes sky-high."
"Once humanity's appetite is whetted, reason goes out the window. And once the whole internet is cursing miHoYo for running hunger marketing and begging for open beta — that's when phase two begins."
"At that point, I'll take this extraordinarily impressive beta data and go knock on Shenzhou's official door."
"I'll say miHoYo's production capacity has maxed out, that we can't handle a project this big alone. And then, quite naturally, I'll pull Shenzhou's administrative power into the mix."
"Next comes the official red-header documents."
"The government steps in directly. They'll classify this originally profit-driven entertainment game as a 'national-level somatic interaction and public health research project.' Under the banner of tech education for the public, they'll roll out an unprecedented nationwide open-beta subsidy."
He picked up a pen from the table, spinning it between his fingers.
"Those AR glasses that were scalped to astronomical prices will now be delivered free of charge to anyone's door, just by linking their local ID."
"The citizens will feel like they've scored a jackpot windfall off both corporate capital and the state."
"Within three days, I want device-ownership rates among Arc City's resident population to skyrocket to eighty percent."
"Once we're there, all the infrastructure work will be complete."
"The streets will be full of Honkai Beast projections everywhere — but to the citizens, those won't be monsters. They'll be walking ATMs and XP bags."
"And what about the people left over?" Tesla looked puzzled. "There will always be stubborn old-timers who refuse to play games no matter what. With population density this high, all it takes is a small handful of people wandering around the center of a battlefield and the whole line collapses on the spot!"
"That's exactly what phase three is for."
Su Yu leaned back in his broad chair, fingers interlaced.
"We're going to carry out an epic mass migration."
"For the young people, miHoYo will launch the 'Spark Relay' national inter-city competition."
"We'll announce that the new map's high-level monsters have landed in neighboring cities, even in tourist spots all over the country."
"miHoYo will offer these cross-server pioneer players enormous travel subsidies, covering food and lodging."
"Lured by that sugar-coated bait, millions of leaderboard-grinding guilds — even grandmas' scenic tour groups — will pack their bags like locusts and pour out of Arc City overnight."
"That's the most lawful disaster evacuation there is."
He turned to look at Eden.
"As for the elderly who can't walk far, isolated households, or the diehard holdouts who refuse to move —"
"Eden, mobilize your capital. Go to the underground air-raid shelters and civil defense facilities that Anti-Entropy has secretly reinforced, and hold enormous free 'health check-up and wellness lecture' events. Hand out free rice, flour, oil, hand out all-natural free-range eggs."
"As long as the freebies are generous enough and plentiful enough, they'll walk on their own two canes right down into the absolute-safe zone thirty meters underground and claim a seat."
"And what about the ones left — the resident workers and office employees who have to keep the city running?" Tesla's brow stayed furrowed, still trying to find a hole in this insane web.
"Leave that to God and the weather bureau."
Su Yu took a deep breath.
"Issue the highest-level red thunderstorm warning — citywide work and school suspension."
"At the same time, launch the in-game 'Indoor Holdout' event."
"As long as you stay in your home and let your device provide computing power, you earn money doing nothing."
"But the moment the device detects you've stepped outside the building, the cash reward drops to zero instantly."
"To protect their perfect attendance bonus and their subsidy, these workers will lock themselves willingly into their concrete boxes."
The conference room went utterly silent.
Everyone was digesting a plan that exploited human weakness to its absolute limit.
"When the countdown hits zero, and the real Spatial Rift tears open —"
Su Yu stood up.
"Arc City's exposed resident population will have shrunk to an absolutely controllable low point. Before the Skyward Shield spreads open, we'll have completed a total physical clearance by every means available."
"At that point, we clamp the drop zone shut with an energy light-curtain, completely sealed off."
"Out-of-province players will be celebrating on the leaderboards; the old folks in the air-raid shelters will be happily listening to lectures and collecting eggs; the residents in their apartments will stare out the window at the light-curtain, gasping at how damn realistic the bare-eye 3D effects look this time."
He swept his gaze across Kevin, Kiana, and Rita.
"And they'll never know that behind that so-called light-curtain special effect lies the front line of the fight against the apocalypse."
The hologram went dark.
The conference room sank into deep silence.
Tesla's lips moved a few times before she finally found her voice.
"So — in other words —"
"You're planning to use a game as a mask, cash payouts as bait, drag the national team in to vouch for it, and trick the entire city's citizens into being game NPCs."
"Then use a new map launch to empty the super-city out as much as possible, lock the grandmas and grandpas into underground shelters with free eggs..."
"And finally activate the Skyward Shield to physically isolate them completely — and the whole time we'll be wearing a 'holographic CG live-action production crew' badge, going toe-to-toe with the Honkai out in the open?"
She said it slowly, with a slight pause between each phrase, as if she needed to reassemble it all in her head to make sure she'd heard it right.
Along the length of the table, almost everyone's expression had changed.
This plan was too huge, too dark, and frankly too insane.
Siegfried sat in his seat, zipping his leather jacket up and down, the metallic rasp of the zipper unusually loud in the silence.
Cecilia laid a hand on his wrist, and his motion stopped.
Su Yu braced both hands on the edge of the conference table, supporting his slightly leaning-forward body.
"I know — you're probably thinking this plan sounds like a script written by a lunatic who escaped from an asylum, completely detached from reality."
"I also know full well how many nerve-wracking margin-of-error challenges we'll run into once this actually gets carried out."
"But from the very start — from the moment that hundred-and-eighty-day countdown lit up above your heads — the people in this room have already, again and again, pinned the impossible to the ground and made it eat dirt!"
"Facing the Honkai's iron hooves grinding toward us, we didn't choose to kneel down and wait to die."
"We grinded our tech tree until our livers gave out, sold the pot and the pan to forge god-tier gear, drilled soldiers on hell-mode difficulty, and secretly built the Skyward Shield underground."
"Again and again we've danced on a tightrope of deception, stuffing the Spatial Rifts back where they belong, shielding these unwitting ordinary people behind our own backs!"
"This road is dark enough that we can't see the bottom of it."
"But we've already sped this far down this one-way street. There's no turning back now."
"Today, standing here, slamming Ordinal Scale on the table with all of you — on the surface it looks like preparation for a rainy day. But really..."
"It's because I've staked my life on all of you."
"You know better than anyone — if we can't even survive the first wave of invasion, then every single blueprint after that is worth less than a fart!"
"But precisely because I dare to throw this world-deceiving scheme onto this table — that means I have absolute faith in this bunch of monsters we call a team!"
"We will make it through this first wave. We will hold this rotten, but not-yet-hopeless world together."
He lifted his gaze from the reflection on the tabletop, letting it rest for a moment on every face in the room.
"It's precisely because I believe in you that I want to look further into the future. I want to keep society's order running as smoothly as possible, and keep humanity's internal infighting and panic to a minimum — as little as possible."
"Our alliance started with Honkai Impact 3rd. And it'll keep walking forward with us into Ordinal Scale too."
He turned to his side.
Kiana was looking at him with those heterochromatic eyes wide open.
"I've always believed that stories themselves hold the power to rewrite reality. And a game, as a vessel that carries stories, can just as much become the trigger for miracles."
"Human empathy, the wishes of every player gathered together, even the underlying logic of my System's existence — all of it tells us to believe in the miracles humanity can create."
"When tiny wills converge, they really can be enough to move the world."
"So — lend me your strength. Let's turn the impossible into the possible."
"Let's step on the Honkai's face and tell it —"
Su Yu's hand slowly closed into a fist on the table.
"Humanity is not weak! Humanity does not fear! Humanity is not empty-handed!"
He bowed his head deeply to everyone present.
Someone in the room gasped.
The air seemed to compress for an instant, then loosen again.
Into the silence came a laugh that broke the mood.
Tesla shot up from her seat and shook her stiff shoulders hard.
"Hey, hey, hey, Su Yu! Where the hell did you rip that terminal-chuunibyou, blood-boiling anime protagonist speech from? Listening to that gave me goosebumps all over — I nearly died of secondhand embarrassment!"
After stretching her shoulders, she planted her hands on her hips, sweeping her eyes over Su Yu with a look like she was staring at an idiot.
"Quit rambling, it's exhausting! You want to do something big? Just say what you need! I'm Anti-Entropy's most brilliant scientist, thank you very much!"
"Look at this room — it's packed wall-to-wall with the most deranged brains and monsters on this planet. Whether you want VR, AR, or to punch a hole in the sky, we'll grind it out for you!"
Eden set her teacup gently back on its tray.
"From the moment I decided to stay by your side, Su Yu, I already made peace with everything that would come. My private treasury is open to you, anytime."
"This vulgar money — you can't take it with you when you die, can't bring it with you either."
"If spending it can buy even one ten-thousandth of a miracle for this world, for humanity — even if I had to spend my entire fortune today, I'd do it gladly."
Bronie poked half her face out from under her hood, blew her bubble gum until it popped with a sharp crack in the silence.
She lazily raised a hand and waved it idly through the air.
"What else can I do? I'm the one who got on this pirate ship of yours, Boss."
"How does that old saying go? Marry a chicken, follow the chicken. Marry a dog, follow the dog."
"Stuck with a boss like you who only knows how to squeeze child labor, guess I'll just have to mash the controller and clear this game right alongside you. Right?"
Kevin and Su exchanged a glance.
Neither of them spoke.
But one after the other, they both gave Su Yu a nod.
The gesture was brief and calm, and once you thought about it, it meant exactly four words: you decide, I'm in.
Rita stepped back from the far end of the table, folding her hands in front of her, and dipped into a standard maid's curtsy.
"As you wish, Master Su Yu."
Siegfried tugged his jacket zipper up to his chest and back down half an inch, then glanced over at Cecilia.
Cecilia gently patted the back of his hand where it rested on his knee.
Siegfried cleared his throat, looking like some middle-aged guy about to pull an all-nighter at an internet cafe.
"Count me in. Just don't leave me sitting around bored."
Cecilia only smiled faintly and gave Su Yu a small nod.
Mobius let out a soft snort of laughter through her nose.
She switched which leg was crossed over the other, fingers tapping absently on her knee.
"You really are one reckless little lab rat," the corner of her mouth curled up. "But, I have to admit — I don't hate this kind of foolish, hopeless dream."
The last gaze settled on the seat to Su Yu's left.
Kiana Kaslana met Su Yu's eyes, lifted her chin, and gave a thumbs-up.
"Whatever this young lady can do to help, just say the word! Whatever crazy thing you're planning, I'll be standing right beside you through all of it! And don't you forget — we're the number-one best partners in the entire universe."
Her thumb tapped her own chest.
"The irreplaceable female lead, and the Producer!"
Su Yu didn't say anything.
He looked into Kiana's clear eyes, then let his gaze drift away.
His eyes traveled once around the conference table, and he took a deep breath.
"Thank you, everyone," he straightened his back. "I'll only say the sappy stuff once — that's enough."
"Since none of you seem to want out — then, moving forward —"
His gaze passed through the dim blue data-light of the hologram, as if piercing through that not-yet-torn sky, staring directly at the dead ends and miracles waiting to be rewritten.
"Let's use this AR spectacle to swindle the entire world."
He paused for a moment, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile.
"Let's show that magician genius who always has 'fraud' hanging off her lips, and those self-important gods up in the sky, exactly who —"
"is the one who can cheat death and still pull off a magic trick on the whole world with one hand at the same time —"
"The greatest liar of all."
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