Where's the promised Third Honkai?!!

Heaven knows, Little AI's words were absolutely not meant to mock her host.

When the entire Far East Branch was wanted by Schicksal, taking in a critically injured Kiana right under their noses—Fu Li was basically gambling with his life!

Not to mention he'd fattened the girl up nicely; in a wuxia or xianxia setting, it'd be downright unreasonable if she didn't offer herself to him in gratitude!

"We all came out of Changkong City, so we ought to look out for each other. Others wouldn't get this treatment from me." Fu Li didn't think he was being saintly. "And it's not just me—other survivors like Raiden Mei and Bronya have been pretty good to me too."

Hearing about new characters being unlocked, Prometheus expressed keen interest.

"Nothing much to say. They're the two Changkong City survivors who joined St. Freya with Kiana. Ran into them a few times on missions. As soon as they heard I'd escaped the Third Honkai in Changkong City, they got real warm."

"Warm how?"

"Bronya often teaches me the hacking skills she's best at. If I've got any tricky problems on the dark web, she helps without a second word. Mei's even more enthusiastic—she tried to gift me her family's ancient sword art, 'Hokushin Itto-ryu,' for free."

Saying this, Fu Li wore a wistful expression. "Too bad I've got zero talent for hacking, and for various reasons, I only picked up the basics of the sword art."

"Seems like the host is quite popular with the ladies."

Prometheus genuinely felt happy for him.

"Too bad that's not exactly a good thing."

He didn't know what he was thinking of, but Fu Li's face, which had been reminiscing moments ago, suddenly clouded over.

Years of ups and downs meant Fu Li rarely showed such intense emotional swings, but whenever he recalled those damned Babar bastards, he couldn't help wanting to draw his blade and vent on something.

"The Herrscher of Domination..."

After Kiana left without a word, Fu Li continued his solitary life.

His strength steadily climbed through training, soon reaching a step away from the critical threshold.

Normally, after some more self-accumulation, Fu Li would evolve from an A-rank, who 'casually rewrites the surrounding environment in battle,' to a critical rank, where 'critical fights redraw the map.'

But just like those bizarre micro-nations and hardcore ruthless figures worthy of the Tongliao series, since the conversation had reached this point, it was impossible for nothing to go wrong.

Fu Li was kidnapped—by a group of small puppets calling themselves the Rabble.

It sounded embarrassing, but in reality, it wasn't embarrassing at all.

The Rabble, true name the Herrscher of Domination, the tenth among the current civilization's Sequence Herrschers, possessing a thousand independent avatars, an S-rank transcendent existence.

For them, not only was Fu Li only A-rank at the time, even if he were critical, tying him up would be a piece of cake.

S-rank and below S-rank were two completely different concepts; the former had transcended the sea of suffering, while the latter still struggled among the masses.

But the question was, with such a gap between them, why would the Herrscher of Domination bother kidnapping a small fry like Fu Li, whom they could wipe out with a wave of their hand?

The answer was simple.

With eyes revealing a bone-chilling coldness like eternal ice, he rubbed the slightly cool blade tang of Crescent Moon and said in a flat tone: "Their goal in capturing me was to use my life to threaten their enemies."

"Ugh!!!"

The driver in the bus seat suddenly felt a chill. He touched the back of his neck, where his hairs stood on end, and suspiciously glanced in the rearview mirror.

A woman holding a child was comforting a wailing baby; the suited man on the other side was drowsily leaning against the window, dozing off.

A few workers were gathered around playing cards; noticing the driver's gaze, an old lady returned a kind smile. Everything seemed peaceful.

A false alarm?

He didn't think much of it and turned up the bus's air conditioning a notch.

Breath Concealment—a byproduct of cultivating the Human Immortal Path. A special skill that could mask and cut off one's aura for covert operations.

Initial rank: D. It upgraded continuously with the cultivation of the Human Immortal Path.

As a state-type skill, Fu Li could actively control the activation and deactivation of Breath Concealment.

Moreover, the skill's energy consumption was so low that, until now, no one had noticed there was a person holding a stylishly cool bat in the back of the bus.

Unfortunately, a D-rank skill still had its limits. At least it couldn't fully mask the killing intent Fu Li had suddenly burst out with, startling the baby in the pregnant woman's arms.

"The Herrscher of Domination... captured the host... to threaten others?"

The baby's cries and Prometheus's murmur brought Fu Li back to his senses. He suppressed his killing intent: "Yeah, they captured me to threaten people."

"When I first heard this from those Rabble, I thought they were just messing around. With my social circle—where those close to me are happy and those against me are even happier—who could they threaten by capturing me?"

"Host, that's not something you should say with pride..."

Little AI held her forehead but quickly thought of something.

She ventured tentatively: "Could it be that the Herrscher of Domination wants to threaten Miss Kiana through you?"

It was a logical guess. The famous Russian playwright Chekhov once proposed the well-known Chekhov's Gun theory:

If a gun is hung on the wall in the first act, it must be fired by the last act.

Similarly, since Fu Li had talked about Kiana for so long, she was bound to appear at a crucial point.

And the boy's next answer confirmed Prometheus's speculation.

"Exactly! Those damned scum blindfolded me with a black cloth, gagged me, and dragged me, powerless to resist, into a domain constructed by Herrscher authority—a dimensional space called the Dominion Theater."

"It was there that I heard Kiana's voice... the voice of Kiana who had reached S-rank."

"S-rank?"

"Yeah, that's right, S-rank!"

Even for someone who had weathered no small number of storms, Fu Li's tone still carried a hint of absurdity and disbelief.

"God knows how the hell she even ranked up—charging in alone with a broken crimson sword, slaughtering through the Rabble... I think I vaguely heard someone helping her?"

Under normal circumstances, for someone like Fu Li, even if his vision were blocked, it wouldn't have hindered his judgment of the battle situation much.

Unfortunately, likely to add some dramatic flair, the sadistic Puppets of Domination pulled a few little tricks, cutting off most of his perception of the battlefield.

With her companions' help, Kiana quickly cleared out most of the puppet forces, charging straight for the Rabble's main body.

And then—clang, clang!

The captive beauty Fu Li, coerced by the villains, made a dazzling entrance before everyone!

His condition at the time was far from miserable; the puppets treated him fairly well.

After all, he was the trump card they'd saved for a critical moment to turn the tide—of course they had to protect him properly, to avoid any accidents.

But just because his condition wasn't miserable didn't mean his appearance was proper.

Putting a Domination-style blindfold on him wasn't too much, right? And dressing him in a matching bodysuit wasn't too much either?

Just as the puppets had predicted, the moment Fu Li appeared, Kiana's heart wavered—far more than they had even imagined!

And it made sense, from Kiana's perspective:

A boy had followed her all the way from a foreign land to the Far East, faced the Third Honkai—a catastrophe with no hope of survival—and even had his fate changed; after the last lesson, he'd picked up a suicidal her, taken her home, and cared for her meticulously, only for her to leave without so much as a goodbye—or rather, without daring to say one—once she recovered!

Most crucially, Fu Li's entire purpose revolved around the name Kiana Kaslana; from start to finish, he had pursued Kiana Kaslana.

But what about her? She wasn't that person!

She had never been the Kiana Kaslana who made a childhood promise with him; she was just an experimental subject, K423, a cuckoo in the nest!

Shamelessly usurping the identity of his first love, yet time and again using this face and these words to wound and disappoint him—this alone filled Kiana with immense guilt. And now, you bastard Herrscher of Domination, you dare to push A Li out as a shield?

I'll kill you!

I'll fucking kill you, ahhhhhhh!!!

And so, naturally, the flawless heart of the Herrscher of Flamescion cracked.

The Herrscher of Domination's main body keenly seized this opportunity, using invisible threads imbued with Domination power to hoist the rampaging girl into the air!

The Herrscher had long prepared; the threads, carrying all remaining power, sliced into the skin of Kiana's neck in an instant!

"She'll die!"

Whether it was Kiana, who had just realized the danger, or the other onlookers, that word surfaced in everyone's mind!

"I'll win!"

The Rabble couldn't help but burst into laughter—or rather, she already had, but the sound of laughter traveled far slower than the lightning-fast clash on the battlefield!

Yet no one could have expected that, in that most critical moment, a sacrifice no one had paid any attention to would change everything.

When a person's pride and everything they had were shattered, when they realized they had become a burden dragging others down.

Even if they seemed normal on the surface, they would still snap.

Fu Li extended his right hand and slowly clenched it.

"I broke through, right then—to the seventh turn, to the threshold."

Nine Revolutions of Unrivaled, created by Su Mei, the Fairy Wushuang among the Seven Swords of Taixu, and Ma Feima of the Galloping Horse Sword, both disciples of the Immortal Crimson Vulture. Its content had little connection to the Void Sword Qi it referenced.

Using the dantian as a catalyst and the meridians as a cauldron, it guides true qi (Honkai Energy) through the body, strengthening the flesh and organs.

The internal art has nine layers, called nine revolutions;

each breakthrough brings a complete transformation and a great leap in power.

(The above is sourced from the official Honkai Impact 3rd visual novel, Record of the Broken Sword.)

This was the technique given to Fu Li by the one who truly led him into the Honkai side.

With the breakthrough, compensating for the last weak point—his physical constitution—Fu Li's overall assessment finally reached the threshold.

Yes, the threshold couldn't stir even a ripple in a battle between S-ranks.

But that depended on both sides' conditions.

Over ninety percent of the Domination puppet clones had been destroyed, the battle had reached its white-hot climax, and the remaining power was all used to restrain Kiana and the others who were eliminating the puppet clones.

Even a mere Fu Li, at this critical moment, could turn the tables.

"I annihilated the remaining Domination puppets, then walked up to Kiana." He said, "I wanted to kill her."

"?"

"Come on, Prometheus, that was the Herrscher of Domination." Fu Li half-closed his eyes and complained, "I was tied up by them the whole way. It's only natural that my mind and body were secretly tampered with, right?"

Little AI indicated that her host's reasoning was so sound she had no comeback.

Other Herrschers might disdain such actions, but if you're talking about that bitch Dominion? That's perfectly normal!

What followed was simple. Fu Li, whose mind was filled with nothing but 'Kill the Honkai kill the Honkai typing is so tiring kill the Honkai kill kill kill kill kill kill!!!', only felt his body burn and his mind blur. By the time he opened his eyes again, pierced clean through, he was already hearing his landlady's annoyingly loud banging on the door.

Chapter 18: "The Weak Draw Their Blades, Cutting Down the Weaker"

With a hiss, the bus doors slid shut before Fu Li.

Watching the bus depart, Fu Li glanced at the stop sign beside him, tightened his backpack, and headed southwest from memory.

"Breath Concealment really is handy. Almost missing my stop is the only thing that's hard to swallow."

Why almost miss the stop? His presence was too low—the driver hadn't even noticed he was still on the bus.

Fu Li complained in a boasting tone, but after a long silence, he got no reply from Little AI.

"Prometheus?"

"...Mm. I'm here."

Prometheus snapped back from her immersed reverie.

What Fu Li had just described so simply—in her mind, the sunless Dominion Theater, Kiana suspended midair by invisible threads, Fu Li turned into a beast of mad slaughter, and finally Fu Li standing before tear-blurred Kiana, hoarsely shouting and barely restraining his killing urge as he made her drive the Flamescion Greatsword into his own chest—every scene was vividly simulated by the top-tier Soul Steel chip from the Previous Era.

"Host... don't you blame Miss Kiana?"

In the end, she couldn't help but ask.

"Huh? Blame her?" Fu Li blinked. "Oh, you mean that time I was happily running forward and suddenly got grabbed as a hostage?"