"Fu-Qi Falls into a Bitter Battle"
Facing Kiana as she charged like a meteor, Fu Li felt remarkably calm.
As calm as a terminally ill Russian military policeman sitting on an un-dismantlable time bomb that would explode in three seconds and destroy half a city, whose daughter had just run off to America.
Without hesitation, he flicked his wrist and fired the two bullets he had been clutching in his palm into his own body.
At the same time, he grabbed Kiana by the collar and retreated.
"Hey! What are you doing?!"
The little blackie he had grabbed screamed, just as a silver-white blade flashed before her eyes.
As she retreated, her hands suddenly grew lighter. The twin pistols she had used to block Ling's attack broke in half and fell to the ground, leaving only the grips in her hands.
Obviously, if Fu Li had not grabbed her and pulled back, it would have been Kiana Kaslana's body that was cut in two.
At that moment, Fu Li, who had used Void Step to retreat more than ten meters, felt his eyelids twitch violently. "Long time no see? Right, as long as you don't come, I'll be perfectly fine!"
He had even used an exclamation mark, which said plenty about his mood right now.
"Y-You, you, you, you, you!!!"
Kiana was dumbfounded by what she saw. She had clearly seen Fu Li in an utterly miserable state before.
How had he become so lively again in the blink of an eye?
Name: Healing Bullet Level: D Category: Consumable Effect: A special bullet developed by the leader of the Anti-Entropy faction's NLNS for prompt battlefield treatment. Its special gelatinous shell was filled with medicinal gel made from Maca, Antibiotics, and a series of other drugs. Upon hitting the target, the gelatinous shell disintegrated. Together with the gel, it seeped into the target's body through pores and other openings, rapidly healing wounds while providing roughly half an hour of pain relief and sedation. Even if the target had been shot several times and suffered multiple blade wounds, as long as they did not die immediately, a single Healing Bullet could completely close their wounds within one to three seconds. This bullet possessed no destructive force whatsoever, including impact or pain upon contact. Even when loaded into a sniper rifle, it caused neither pain nor wounds upon impact, as though they had never existed in the first place. Note: From "Makurazashi Island".
Fu Li had drawn an entire magazine of seven of these during his initial ten-pull.
He had been holding two in his hand just now. By firing those two Healing Bullets into himself at the crucial moment, he had restored his completely drained body.
Besides that, his Honkai Energy had also recovered slightly.
The Human Immortal Path could replenish large amounts of Life Energy through digestion, and Life Energy could in turn be converted into Honkai Energy at a certain ratio.
It was not much, but something was better than nothing.
At this moment, Ling, whose slash had missed, also looked over.
"Hehe~ So you had a hidden trump card after all?"
She was clearly smiling, yet there was not the slightest trace of amusement in her enchanting purple eyes.
She felt like Fu Li had fooled her yet again! That bastard had clearly been baiting her into drawing her blade so he could carry out some disgusting scheme!
If that little white-haired, blue-eyed girl had not interfered, she might have fallen for his trick again!
Kiana also realized that she had ruined Fu Li's plan, but she had no time to think about that now. Understanding the battlefield was what mattered most.
The girl quickly said, "Forget about those donkey ears for now. Tell me who she is! And where did you find an SA-rank monster like this?"
"Just think of her as a Honkai Beast that cultivated into a spirit." Fu Li glanced at the half-grip in her hand, then quickly took out the Galaxy Bat and handed it to her. "Also, what's SA-rank?"
"I just made it up. An exception beyond A-rank—Super A-rank!"
Kiana took the bat and swung it around a little, only to discover that this thing practically seemed tailor-made for her!
Rules were made to be broken! Screw it!
Fu Li frowned. "If an exception beyond A-rank is SA-rank, then by your logic, wouldn't exceptions beyond B-rank like us be—"
"Shut up! You're the SB!" Kiana immediately snapped back. Then, realizing what he meant, she widened her eyes. "Wait! You're saying you're also an exception beyond B-rank?!"
"What else would I be?"
Fu Li shot her a sidelong glance. That condescending look made the girl yell in outrage.
Perhaps because the situation was so urgent, the two of them no longer interacted with the same awkward distance as before. Instead, there was a strange familiarity and tacit understanding between them, like a young couple reunited after being apart for ages following a breakup.
But their enemy certainly would not give them the chance to keep doing their married-couple... Fu-Qi comedy routine.
"I say, are you two really going to keep ignoring me?"
Ling's long pink bangs covered her eyes. Before her voice even reached them, a slash almost faster than time itself arrived!
Fu Li was certain he had not seen wrong. This strike really was almost faster than time.
Its principle resembled curvature manipulation in science fiction. By warping the space around the blade, it interfered with the time fused with it, creating a godspeed iaijutsu slash that surged forward!
Well, surpassing time was not the same as surpassing the speed of light. The inequality won instantly.
Fu Li instinctively crossed the hilt and Crescent Moon before himself to block, while activating Void Step to form a Lotus beneath his feet for leverage.
Kiana reacted a beat slower than him, but she quickly raised the newly acquired Galaxy Bat and wedged it between the crossed hilt and Crescent Moon to help block.
Bang!
The shockwave from the collision of two blades, a bat, and a sheath rapidly spread outward. Fu Li, who had endured the attack and been pushed dozens of meters away, tossed aside the sheath that had broken in two, his expression turning even colder.
Earlier, he had considered arguing against Kiana's claim that their enemy was SA-rank. In his view at the time, without the Four-tailed Fox Demon's body and the massive Honkai Energy stored within it, Ling was at most B-rank now.
He had not expected her to still possess such exquisite swordsmanship!
On their side, Kiana was indeed an exception beyond B-rank, but she was a gunfighter who excelled at mid- to long-range combat. Fighting someone so skilled with a sword at close range clearly put her at a disadvantage, not to mention that her guns had just gone GG.
—I need to draw the enemy's attention over here!
With that thought, Fu Li took a deep breath and called out, "That move just now wasn't your own creation, was it?"
In the distance, Ling, who had been completely suppressing Kiana, twitched her fox ears.
"Stay right where you are! Once I finish off this little girl, I'll have all the time in the world to deal with you!"
She slashed aside Kiana, who was barely holding on, then rushed in with her Tachi without even looking toward Fu Li.
"That assumes you can win." Fu Li summoned three Shadow Blades to circle around him. "Using warped spacetime to alter the speed of drawing a blade... I have to admit, the person who invented this sword technique must have been a powerhouse whose mind, body, and skill had all reached their peaks."
"But precisely because of that, this move places extremely high demands on its user." After sending several slashes to assist the precarious Kiana, he continued, "Compared to the master who taught you swordsmanship, your cultivation of the mind is far from adequate. Otherwise, that single strike just now would probably have turned both me and her into two pieces."
That was assuming Fu Li had not used the Flying Thunder God to escape. As a noble one-use displacement item, the Flying Thunder God Kunai possessed the extremely rare trait of ignoring the interference effects of skills and items below A-rank.
That time-surpassing iaijutsu slash was indeed rare and could likewise interfere with the operation of spacetime-related skills, but it still fell within the category of B-rank techniques.
At least in Ling's hands, it could not interfere with Flying Thunder God's teleportation.
"Fu-Qi Total Collapse"
Back on the battlefield, when Ling heard Fu Li say that she was inferior to the move's creator, her aggressive assault abruptly stopped.
She abandoned the furious Kiana, turned her head, stared at Fu Li, and began to laugh hysterically.
"Yeah, I'm not as good as her. What else?"
"There's also the issue with the technique itself. You only have its form, not its spirit." Fu Li said, "You're merely forcing yourself to imitate it with your excellent physical abilities. You have not truly mastered this swordsmanship."
Ling did not deny his words, because that was the truth.
The iaijutsu slash from before was truly named Instant Blade: Endless Asura, a move from her sister's original sword style, Fleeting Slash.
It was an incomparably advanced iaijutsu technique that transformed stillness into motion in an instant.
If it had been Ling's sister, she truly would have needed only an instant to cut off Kiana's head.
But when Ling used it, she could only watch helplessly as her attack was blocked by the two's seamless cooperation.
Because she did not know swordsmanship at all. She merely loved to cup her cheeks as she squatted in the courtyard at home, smiling as she watched her most, most, most beloved big sister practice her forms again and again.
Fifty thousand years ago.
Fifty thousand years...
Ling closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the enchanting purple instantly turned crimson!
"Fifty thousand years! AAAAAAAAAH!!!"
The girl leaped into the air, and the demonic blade in her palm smashed down on Fu Li's head as though venting all her resentment!
BOOM!!!
The ground beneath Fu Li's feet was instantly smashed into a rocky crater over ten meters deep, and that was merely the residual shockwave from the transmitted force.
"Hahahahaha! Die, die, die, die!!!"
The two Shadow Blades Fu Li had used to block shattered in an instant. The last one barely joined Crescent Moon in stopping that furious blow.
"Don't block, you little brat! Weren't you acting all high and mighty just now? Huh? Hahahahaha!!!"
Ling grinned viciously and stretched out her other hand, clawing toward the chest right before her with a tearing whistle.
Fortunately, a white meteor flashed over in time, scooping Fu Li up around the waist and fleeing into the distance.
Kiana had a headache. "No, seriously, where exactly did what you said just now offend her?!"
"How would I know? I hadn't even started, and she already collapsed!"
Fu Li, cradled in her arms like a princess, was equally dumbfounded. He had not even unleashed one ten-thousandth of the vulgar insults in his stomach. How had this woman directly transformed into a deranged girlboss?
That was the fun of information asymmetry. Neither Fu Li nor Kiana knew that, beyond love, Ling felt even more hatred toward her sister.
In the girl's eyes, at the end of the Previous Era, her sister and that damned cold-blooded woman had joined forces to seal her, the Herrscher of Erosion, inside the Divine Box for a full fifty thousand years!
Scientists in Britain conducted an experiment in the last century. They placed six volunteers separately in sealed rooms almost completely isolated from the outside world, observing the changes that occurred after the volunteers were deprived of sight, hearing, and touch.
Thirty-seven-year-old comedian Adam Bloom was one of those six volunteers.
For two full days and nights, he sat in a completely dark, absolutely silent room while researchers observed his behavior through night-vision cameras.
For the first half hour, Bloom kept talking and singing to himself, but he soon grew tired of it.
After eight hours, Bloom began experiencing delusions and occasionally broke down in tears.
After thirty hours, he began pacing nonstop around the small room like a trapped beast.
After forty hours, he started hallucinating and nearly fell into despair.
When he finally left the room, he was almost completely exhausted.
He said, "It was terrifying. I almost thought I would never be able to laugh again for the rest of my life."
That was right. That was merely the result of being confined for forty hours.
And Ling had endured that kind of confinement alone for a full fifty thousand years!
Even if I am a Herrscher, am I not still your little sister?
I was clearly killed once for no reason at all, yet not only did you want to kill me a second time, you even wanted to make me suffer without being able to live or die?
Under those circumstances, someone opening their mouth to mock Ling for being inferior to the sister who had sealed her up... if the girl did not go berserk, that would be the truly frightening thing.
But regardless, Fu Li had achieved his goal of drawing Ling's attention.
He patted Kiana's waist and slipped a red crystal along with two Healing Bullets into her pocket. "Put me down."
After dodging several blood-red blade flashes pursuing them, Kiana frowned and asked, "Are you confident?"
The body Ling was currently using belonged to Yae Sakura. To avoid being affected by that person's memories, she had always forced herself not to look through that portion of them.
However, perhaps because her rampage had made her fearless, she was now gradually merging with those memories.
Yae Sakura herself was a supreme master of swordsmanship. As a result, Ling's combat power had not fallen because of her rampage. Instead, her swordsmanship was becoming increasingly fluid and refined.
They could not win.
Before you continue