Where's the promised Third Honkai?!!

Chapter 26 "Fu Li and Kiana's Hard Struggle"

Facing Kiana, who charged at him like a meteor, Fu Li's heart was eerily calm at that moment.

Calm as a Russian terminally ill military police officer sitting on a time bomb that couldn't be defused and would explode in three seconds with enough force to destroy half a city, while his daughter had just run off to America.

Without a second thought, he twisted his wrist and drove the two bullets he'd been clutching in his palm into his own body.

At the same time, he grabbed Kiana by the collar and yanked her backward.

"Hey, what are you doing!"

The little black-clad girl he'd grabbed yelped loudly as a silvery-white blade flashed before her eyes.

As she retreated, the weight in her hands suddenly lightened. The twin guns she'd used to block Ling's attack snapped in two and clattered to the ground, leaving only the grips in her grasp.

Clearly, if Fu Li hadn't grabbed and pulled her away, the body that would have been cut in two would have been Kiana Kaslana's.

And at that moment, Fu Li, who had instantly retreated over ten meters, felt his eyelids twitch violently. "Long time no see? Yeah, you don't see me, and I'm fine!"

He rarely used exclamation marks, which said plenty about his current state of mind.

"Y-You you you you!!!"

Seeing this, Kiana was stunned. She'd just witnessed Fu Li in a miserable state earlier.

How, in the blink of an eye, was he back to full vigor?

[Name: Healing Bullet]
[Grade: D]
[Category: Consumable]
[Effect: A special bullet developed by the leader of the Anti-Entropy faction NLNS for timely treatment during combat. The special gelatin shell is filled with a healing gel made from a mixture of Maca, Antibiotics, and other drugs.
Upon impact, the gelatin shell disintegrates and, along with the gel, penetrates the target's body through pores and other entry points, rapidly healing wounds and providing about half an hour of pain relief and sedation.
Even if hit by multiple bullets and suffering several knife wounds, as long as death isn't immediate, a single Healing Bullet can fully close wounds within one to three seconds.
This bullet has no lethal capability, including the impact or pain upon impact; even when loaded into a sniper rifle, it causes no pain or wound upon hitting, as if it never existed at all.
]
[Note: From "Makurazashi Island."]

Fu Li had pulled a total of seven such bullets in a full magazine from his initial ten-pull gacha.

He'd been holding two in his hand the whole time, and by driving these two Healing Bullets into his body at the critical moment, he'd restored his depleted energy.

On top of that, his Honkai Energy had also been somewhat replenished.

The Human Immortal Path could replenish Life Energy in large quantities through digestion, and Life Energy could be converted into Honkai Energy at a certain ratio.

It wasn't much, but something was better than nothing.

At that moment, Ling, who had swung her blade into empty air, also looked over.

"Hehe~ Still holding a trump card, are you?"

Though she was smiling, there was no trace of amusement in her enchanting purple eyes.

She felt like she'd been played by Fu Li yet again! This bastard had clearly been baiting her to strike just now, all to achieve some disgusting scheme!

If it weren't for that white-haired, blue-eyed girl causing trouble, she might have fallen for his trick again!

By now, Kiana had also realized she'd messed up Fu Li's plan, but she couldn't dwell on that now—figuring out the battlefield situation was the priority.

The girl spoke quickly. "Don't bother with this Donkey Ears for now. Tell me who she is, and where the hell did you run into an SA-rank monster like this?"

"Just think of her as a Honkai Beast that cultivated into a spirit," Fu Li said, glancing at the half-gun grip in her hand before quickly pulling out the Galaxy Bat and handing it over. "And what's SA-rank?"

"Something I just made up. A-rank breakthrough, Super A-rank!"

Taking the bat, Kiana swung it a few times and found it felt like it was made for her!

Rules were meant to be broken! Dibs!

Fu Li frowned. "A-rank breakthrough is SA-rank, so by that logic, wouldn't our B-rank breakthrough be—"

"Shut up! You're the SB!" Kiana snapped back on the spot, then widened her eyes as the meaning sank in. "Wait! You're saying you're also B-rank breakthrough?!"

"What else?"

Fu Li shot her a sidelong glance, his condescending look making the girl shriek in frustration.

Maybe it was the urgency of the situation, but their banter didn't feel as distant as before. Instead, it carried a subtle, unspoken understanding.

Fu Li instinctively crossed the knife handle and Mikazuki Munechika in front of him, while simultaneously activating Void Step to condense a Lotus beneath his feet for leverage.

Kiana was a beat slower to react, but she quickly grabbed the newly acquired Galaxy Bat and wedged it into the crossing point of the knife handle and Mikazuki to assist in blocking.

'Bang!'

The shockwave from the collision of two blades, one staff, and one sheath rapidly spread outward. After taking the blow head-on and retreating dozens of meters, Fu Li tossed aside the broken sheath, now snapped in two, his expression growing several degrees colder.

Earlier, he had considered refuting Kiana's claim that the enemy was SA-rank. In his mind at the time, without the Four-tailed Fox Demon's body and the vast Honkai Energy stored within it, Ling now was at most a B-rank at her peak.

He never expected she still had such exquisite sword techniques hidden up her sleeve!

As for his side, Kiana's strength was indeed also B-rank breaking the mold, but she was a gunner better suited for mid-to-long range combat. Going head-to-head up close with someone this skilled in swordsmanship was clearly a disadvantage, not to mention her gun 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 original creation, was it."

In the distance, Ling's fox ears twitched as she completely suppressed Kiana.

"Stay put right there! Once I'm done with this little girl, I'll have plenty of time to deal with you!"

She slashed open Kiana, who was barely holding her ground, without even glancing at Fu Li, and pressed forward with her Tachi.

"Only if you can win," Fu Li said, summoning three Shadow Blades to orbit around him. "By distorting time and space to alter the speed of your draw, I have to admit, the one who invented such a sword technique is definitely a master who has reached the peak in mind, body, and technique."

"But precisely because of that, this move demands extremely high standards from the user." He sent out a few slashes to aid the beleaguered Kiana, continuing, "Compared to the master who taught you swordsmanship, your mental cultivation falls far short. Otherwise, with that one strike just now, that guy and I would both be cut in two."

That was assuming Fu Li didn't activate Flying Thunder God to escape. As a premium one-use displacement item, the Flying Thunder God Kunai possessed the extremely rare trait of ignoring skills and item interference effects below A-rank.

A time-surpassing draw slash was indeed rare and would interfere with the operation of time-space skills, but it still fell within the B-rank skill category.

At least in Ling's hands, this move couldn't interfere with Flying Thunder God's teleportation.

Chapter 27: "Fu-Qi Total Collapse"

Back on the battlefield, when Ling heard Fu Li say she was inferior to the creator of that move, her aggressive assault came to an abrupt halt.

She abandoned Kiana, who was full of frustration, turned her head, and stared at Fu Li with a neurotic laugh.

"Yeah, I'm not as good as her. And what else?"

"Also, there's a problem with the technique itself. You've only captured the form, not the spirit," Fu Li said. "You're just forcibly simulating it with your excellent physical abilities, not truly mastering this swordsmanship."

Ling didn't deny his words, because that was the truth.

The draw slash just now was truly called Instant Blade: Endless Asura, a move from her sister's original swordsmanship, "Instant Blade."

It was an extremely masterful draw technique that instantly turned stillness into motion.

If it were Ling's sister, she could have taken Kiana's head in a single instant.

But with Ling, she could only watch helplessly as her attack was blocked by the two of them working in tandem.

Because she didn't know swordsmanship at all. She just liked to sit in the courtyard, cupping her face, smiling as she watched her most, most, most beloved big sister practice over and over again.

Fifty thousand years ago.

Fifty thousand years...

Ling closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, her originally bewitching purple instantly dyed a bloody red!

"FIFTY THOUSAND YEEEEEEARS!!!"

The girl leaped up, the demon blade in her palm crashing down toward Fu Li's head in a vent of fury!

'Boom!!!'

The ground beneath Fu Li's feet was instantly smashed into a rock plate over ten meters deep, and that was just the residual force of the impact.

"Hahahaha! Die, die, die, die!!!"

The two Shadow Blades Fu Li used to block shattered in an instant, and the last one barely held together with Mikazuki Munechika to stop this furious strike.

"Don't block me, you brat! Weren't you just so cocky? Huh? Hahahaha!!!"

Ling grinned savagely, reaching out her other hand, tearing through the air toward his chest just inches away.

Fortunately, a white meteor flashed in time, scooping up Fu Li by the waist and fleeing into the distance.

Kiana was baffled: "Dude, what the hell did you say to piss her off like that?!"

"How should I know? I hadn't even started, and she already collapsed!"

Fu Li, held in her princess carry, was also stunned. He had barely output a ten-thousandth of his crude remarks, and this person had already turned into a full-on madwoman?

This was the fun of asymmetric information. Neither Fu Li nor Kiana had any idea that Ling's feelings for her sister were more hatred than love.

In the girl's eyes, at the end of the Previous Era, it was her sister and that damned cold-blooded woman who joined forces to seal her, the Herrscher of Erosion, inside the Divine Box for fifty thousand years!

Last century, British scientists conducted an experiment. They locked six volunteers in a sealed room almost completely isolated from the outside world, observing the changes that occurred when they were deprived of sight, hearing, and touch.

37-year-old comedian Adam Bloom was one of the six volunteers.

For two full days and nights, he sat in a completely dark, absolutely silent room, while researchers used night-vision cameras to observe his behavior.

For the first half hour, Bloom kept talking to himself and singing, but soon grew bored.

Eight hours later, Bloom began to show paranoid symptoms, sobbing uncontrollably from time to time.

Thirty hours later, he started pacing back and forth in the small room like a trapped beast.

Forty hours later, he began to hallucinate, and nearly fell into complete despair.

When he finally stepped out of the room, he was almost on the verge of collapse.

He said, "This is terrifying. I almost thought I'd never be able to laugh again for the rest of my life."

That's right—this was merely the result of forty hours of confinement.

And Ling had spent a full fifty thousand years alone in such confinement!

Even if I am a Herrscher, does that mean I'm no longer your sister?

I was already killed once for no reason, and not only do you want to kill me a second time, you even want to leave me in a state where I can neither live nor die?

Under such circumstances, if someone openly mocked Ling by comparing her to the sister who sealed her away, and the girl didn't snap—that would be the truly frightening thing.

But regardless, Fu Li had already achieved his goal of drawing Ling's attention.

He patted Kiana on the waist, slipped a red crystal along with two Healing Bullets into her pocket, and said, "Put me down."

Dodging several streaks of blood-red blade light that followed closely, Kiana frowned and asked back, "Are you sure about this?"

The body Ling was currently using was Yae Sakura's. To avoid interference from the other's memories, she had been forcing herself not to browse through that part of her recollection.

But perhaps it was the fearlessness brought on by her rampage—now, she was gradually merging with that portion of memory.

Yae Sakura herself was a supreme master of the sword, which directly meant that not only had Ling's combat power not dropped due to her rampage, her swordsmanship was instead becoming more and more seamlessly integrated.

She couldn't be beaten.