Wasn't There Supposed to Be a Third Honkai?!!

Fu Li crouched on the ground, constantly rummaging through his dimensional storage for something;

Kiana wore an impatient look, yet showed no intention whatsoever of stopping him.

This beautiful scene

was laid bare before the girl's hopeful eyes.

The tree-lined path you imagined had long since become choked with traffic. —Shakespeare

The moment Mei saw this, she was struck dumb as if by lightning, turning to stone.

Little by little, she raised her head. Like a robot, she stared at Fu Li and Kiana, who were also looking at her, and spoke in an incredulous, distant voice:

"What the hell is this?"

What the hell is this?

Chuunibyou Girl Mei Mei

On a full-moon night, atop the Forbidden City, a sword came from the west—a celestial being descended from beyond the heavens.

—This was the truest thought in the hearts of those swordsmen fortunate enough to witness Ximen Chuixue's battle against White Cloud City Lord Ye Gucheng.

How strange. It felt like reason and art had been smashed apart, kneaded together with humor, then steamed in bewilderment. Three parts madness, five parts absurdity, and two parts torment lingered in her mind, impossible to dispel.

—This was the truest thought in Raiden Mei's heart as she arrived on the rooftop and witnessed the two interacting.

The thoughts of both sides seemed vastly different, but they could actually be summed up in one word:

"Huh?"

Yet it was more than a word—it was also a sentence, vividly expressing Fu Li's surprise and shock upon seeing Mei.

It was like in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, when Boss Cao failed to assassinate Dong Zhuo and fled, while Lu Bu pursued him in the name of his foster father.

The two chased each other for thirty miles beneath the moon. Just as Boss Cao was about to escape, Jueying suddenly turned around of its own accord, carried him over to Chitu, and asked, "Bro, any good grazing fields around here?"

Boss Cao was probably thinking about grass.

So was Fu Li.

"Mei-Mei-Mei-Mei-Mei, Mei? Why did you come over at a time like this?!"

"Idiot, didn't I tell you to call her?"

"Of course I know you told me to call her! I mean, why did she get here so fast?!"

Kiana only felt as though the sky had suddenly fallen.

It was like she had eaten Imperial Britain's legendary death cuisine one second, then been pummeled by a hundred Platinum Stars yelling Ora the next—except she happened to have Battle Endurance EX and simply could not die.

It was Picasso's mom taking Picasso back to her parents' house for a visit—abstract all the way to his grandma's house.

"How would I know why she came so fast?" Fu Li, whose head was splitting, couldn't help raising his voice. "And spread your legs already! Your Shenzhou profanity is crushing my head!"

His head had been buried between Kiana's two slender, snow-white thighs. When the unlucky girl shuddered and clamped her legs shut, she immediately squeezed him so hard that stars danced before his eyes.

This girl wasn't like Fu Li, who still needed Demonic Blade · Unknown Fire's enhancement. Her B-rank anomaly was permanently active in every aspect.

Unable to control her strength when nervous, she had nearly squeezed Fu Li to death with a thigh clamp powerful enough to kill an elephant, making him the first unfortunate reborn person in history to have his head crushed between a white-haired beauty's thighs!

Did that count as embarrassing?

"Oh, oh!"

The girl in Hobe Shiro mode also sensed that something felt wrong down there and hurriedly loosened her grip, letting him out.

Having escaped mortal danger, Fu Li's gaze was still unfocused. He did his best to stand straight, stared at Mei's vacant expression, and suddenly said, "Whose general is this? Bring me the time machine, now!"

"A Li, don't scare me, A Li! I was counting on your invincible Memory Eraser to think of something!"

Kiana hugged him and shook him hard in fright. The concern in her eyes was absolutely genuine—in every sense of the word.

"Stop shaking me, stop shaking me! You're going to shake my brains into a smoothie!"

After being shaken by her, Fu Li's head cleared up quite a bit.

"The Memory Eraser can't affect ability users with energy circulation in their bodies." He clutched his throbbing temple, his eyes turning fierce. "Since things have come to this, we can only make her lose her memory—physically!"

As he spoke, he pulled out the twenty-eight-centimeter-long Memory Eraser from his pocket, its surface covered in all sorts of protrusions, and swung it toward Mei with a fierce whoosh, intending to perform a minimally invasive brain procedure on her.

"You're obviously still not normal!" Kiana hurriedly wrapped her arms around him from behind. "Mei, run! If you don't, A Li is going to crack open your skull and light you up like a lantern!"

After her repeated warnings, the girl whose worldview had suffered a devastating blow finally came back to her senses.

"No, no, it's fine! I interrupted your good time! I never expected you two to be so intimately familiar with each other!"

Unfortunately, what she said was not merely at odds with Kiana's expectations—it was completely beside the point.

"Intimately familiar with each other." Fu Li chewed over the phrase, then asked curiously, "Kiana, is she making a dirty joke?"

Clearly, he had not recovered yet.

"Dirty joke my ass! Behave yourself!" After snapping at him, Kiana turned to Mei, her tone becoming aggrieved again. "Mei, listen to me! It really wasn't what it looked like!"

"No need to say anything else! I understand! I wish you both happiness!"

Many examples had proven that people did not necessarily become better at distinguishing right from wrong after receiving an education. Instead, they stubbornly believed that since they had been educated, their conclusions had to be correct.

Thus, Mei waved her delicate hand, left behind a blessing, and turned to leave.

Bang!

A sheathed longsword tore through the air, grazed past Mei, and lightly embedded itself in the fire door before her.

Several loops of tape were wrapped around the middle of the sheath, seemingly a temporary patch made by its owner after a great battle. Well, that was indeed exactly what it was.

Seeing this, the girl stopped and slowly turned around.

She stared intently at Fu Li, who had lowered his throwing posture, one hand resting on the hilt of the wooden sword she carried for self-defense.

"You... really are Fu Li?"

The previous clamor vanished in an instant, leaving only solemnity and vigilance in the air.

Mei both understood and knew about Kiana's situation. Though Kiana was a year younger, her strength far surpassed Mei's.

Mei told Kiana many things, because fundamentally, they belonged to the same world.

Fu Li did not.

He was just an ordinary person.

If an ordinary person got close to Mei—especially a Shenzhou transfer student like Fu Li—he would absolutely be targeted by those "classmates."

Therefore, although Mei had come to see Fu Li as half a friend, she remained exceedingly cold toward him on the surface.

She only spoke to him occasionally. From Fu Li's perspective, she was merely a little better than a stranger.

Yet this ordinary Fu Li had suddenly displayed swordsmanship and strength far beyond her own today, just moments ago.

She, Raiden Mei, was the Menkyo Kaiden of Hokushin Itto-ryu!

Even her strict father had highly praised her talent in swordsmanship!

And he had surpassed her overnight!

Could it be...

"Could it be, Fu Li, you..."

Her porcelain-white teeth lightly bit her lower lip as the girl asked tentatively, "...received the swordsmanship inheritance of some Sword Saint senior?"

That was right. Raiden Mei was just that outstanding.

So outstanding that, on certain pink apps, she would have tags like young lady, upperclassman, JK, untouchable beauty, queen, black thigh-high socks, breast goddess, and other strange labels packed with boki energy beneath her profile.

Yet this seemingly perfect girl possessed a mysterious tag known only to a very small number of people.

She was a chuunibyou.

Dead Memories Suddenly Attack Me

Raiden Mei was a chuunibyou.

Although she hid it well, perhaps this noble young lady of the Raiden family did not even know what chuunibyou meant.

Judging from the conscious and unconscious behaviors she displayed in daily life, she was indeed a terminally ill chuunibyou patient.

There was a small distinction here. For someone like Mei, who had been exposed to the Honkai side since childhood, having a personality that leaned toward what ordinary people considered chuunibyou was inevitable.

A simple example: when Fu Li was young, he had wielded a sword to bully the children of South Village, but he could only bully children.

He could neither unleash sword qi nor vanquish demons and defend the righteous path.

Mei was different. Having practiced Hokushin Itto-ryu since childhood, she could genuinely do the things Fu Li had once dreamed of.

Chuunibyou?

If someone could actually do it, how was that chuunibyou?

That was called keeping one's word and unifying knowledge with action!

But the problem was that Mei took that unity of knowledge and action far too seriously.

Take the Hokushin Itto-ryu she had constantly mentioned before. This ancient sword art had been created by the Far East Sword Saint, Hokushin Wakashu Mei, who had been active during the Warring States period and combined many Eastern schools. Its ultimate techniques were the Extreme Style Sword Forms and the core Heavenly Eye.

These sword forms originally all had concise, elegant names, fully embodying the idea of having both style and strength.

But once they reached Mei's hands, everything changed...

Sanzu Withered Perch became First Form: Divine Speed · Takemikazuchi...

Four Aspects Severing Self became Second Form: Soul Blade · Mutan Jin'ou...

Eight Thunders Crossing became Third Form: Hunting Crimson Leaves · Eight Million Gods...

Crimson Leaf Drizzle · Ten Thousand Tilts to Emptiness became Final Form: Tsumugari · Kamiyo Nanayo...

In his previous life, Mei had once tried to teach Fu Li this set of inherited ancient sword arts, so she had explained to him the origins of these move names.

Teacher Mei had explained everything very seriously. Her soft lips opening and closing, along with the white shirt and black stocking teacher outfit she had specially changed into, were quite captivating as well.

Fu Li, however, felt as though he had been struck by countless blasts of embarrassing black history.

Help! I haven't been a chuunibyou for years! Why are dead memories crawling back out to attack me?

The key was that this girl had another habit: whenever she fought, she had to call out the names of these moves. When she got excited, she would even shout, "I'm MEI!"

In her words, it was a form of respect for both her enemy and herself, as well as an ancestral teaching passed down by the Hokushin forebears.

Then she demanded that Fu Li do the same, claiming that since he was learning Hokushin Itto-ryu, he had to inherit the Raiden family's customs.

At the time, Fu Li had looked thoroughly unwilling. You respect your ancestors so much, but did the old lady know you changed the names of the techniques she passed down into such flamboyant nonsense? So the ancestors' rules are immutable in a quantum superposition state, huh?

Yet he had still agreed without hesitation. He was getting an extraordinary ancient sword art for free; being a little chuunibyou was fine. Practicality came first.

Unfortunately, only a few days after the actual lessons began, St. Freya suffered a tiny little incident of catastrophic proportions, forcing Mei to leave when Fu Li had only learned the rough framework.

When they met again afterward, she had already joined World Serpent.

Not only had her strength surged to S-rank, but she had also become exceptionally busy.

Furthermore, by then Fu Li had already combined Hokushin Itto-ryu, Fleeting Slash—namely Sakura Bloom—and the Taixu Form he had observed, along with various other swordsmanship concepts, to create his own fighting style. His need for the original version was no longer so strong.

He had no feelings, and she had no interest. Naturally, the matter fell through.

All things considered, even though Mei's reaction differed from Kiana's suspicious one, Fu Li was not especially surprised.

With this girl's personality, suspecting that his sudden increase in strength meant he had found another master was perfectly normal.

"Yeah, yeah, sure."

He replied perfunctorily and beckoned with an empty hand.

Crescent Moon, embedded through the fire door, hummed and flew back into his hand together with its sheath.

"By chance, I received the inheritance of an ancient Sword Saint. All this strength was bestowed upon me through an enlightenment initiation."

Yeah, I can use this excuse to brush off Kiana later, too.