Mei said seriously, "But it was because of him that everything that followed happened."
Kiana stuck out her little tongue. "So even if he keeps pestering me like that, I just can't bring myself to hate him."
She unzipped her top and took off her clothes.
"Overlord's Armor Removal."
A voice came from outside the door.
Kiana froze, lowered her head, and looked at her spotless body.
Her fair, pretty face instantly flushed red. "You stinking A Li, who are you calling an overlord!!!"
"Pfft, hahahahaha!!!"
Mei clutched her stomach and collapsed onto the bed, laughing so hard tears streamed down her face.
"Damn it! You bastard!"
Kiana angrily flung a shoe. She had had enough of that trashy man who never stopped thinking of ways to tease her!
She was getting divorced right now!
Meanwhile, in the corridor outside Room 201, Fu Li leaned against the door with the sheathed Crescent Moon in his arms.
Ignoring Kiana's roar from inside, he turned his head and pressed his face against the cold guard of the blade.
The old door could not block Fu Li's hearing. He had heard everything inside.
His expression blanked slightly. After entering the Honkai side, the countless dead ends and obstacles he had faced had long made him forget such a trivial thing he used to do countless times, and had also made him forget that he had once been this kind of person.
So how exactly had he become who he was now?
The subtle influence of the broader environment?
The power of time?
Or had he simply come to understand so-called reality?
None of those.
"I really did try to live up to the Kaslana spirit you spoke of, and I tried to become some kind of knight, but that was all because I made a promise to you when we were children."
He murmured softly, "Since even you've forgotten, there's naturally no need for me to keep it anymore."
After gazing at the brilliant noon sky for a long time, Fu Li yawned boredly.
"Seriously, what's taking so long?"
While the Invincible Trio Squad was laughing and bickering, inside a multi-level underground structure outside Senba Academy.
If someone entered this place, the first thing they would see would be the three-dimensional holographic display projected in midair.
The display showed real-time moving images of Senba Academy and its surroundings. Beneath countless neatly arranged markers, everything was visible at a glance, from the layout of stairwells and corridors to what every class and every individual was doing.
At that moment, the continuous scarlet warning messages appearing beneath the holographic projection and the unending shrill alarms both indicated that the monitored target, "Raiden Mei," was in a very unfavorable situation.
That was right, she had left the monitoring range.
By now, she had already changed clothes with Kiana and was preparing to eat another huge meal before leaving Changkong City.
Was it urgent?
Honestly, not really.
Raiden Mei was merely a C-rank fighter. Even with Kiana added in, dispatching a few more Titans would be enough to handle them.
What a joke, ever heard of the creator of Valkyrie fragments?
But this was not a question of urgency. It was a question of whether they had her or not.
What was Anti-Entropy? A world hegemon that monopolized the vast lands of the Americas and had stood as Schicksal's equal for half a century!
Raiden Mei was an important target they had been secretly monitoring, yet she had actually been abducted by some nobody who had popped up out of nowhere?
Faced with such a Colonel Kiana act of daring to stroke the tiger's whiskers, they absolutely could not tolerate it. They had to hit back hard!
Well, in theory, that was indeed the case.
The reason it was only in theory was that, at the moment, words like empty, vacant, and spotless could all be used to describe the state of the room.
That was right. As the department responsible for guarding the most important raw gem in Cocolia's "great" plan, the monitoring room did not even have a single person left to watch the door.
Was that reasonable?
It was totally river.
"Quack! This old man gets it now!"
Because the researchers who should have been doing this work had already thrown themselves into an even greater cause.
Earlier, the instant a certain Fu Li who wished to remain anonymous stepped into Senba Academy, the range of Heavenly Time Calamity Bestowal encompassed the surrounding area.
An indescribable sense of clarity struck the minds of every researcher within the underground facility.
It was like mixing a beauty named Qiuxiang into a pile of ugly women, or putting a plate of chili fish heads that had perfect color, aroma, and flavor onto a table full of Stargazy Pies.
Empowered by the force of civilization's development, the difficult problems that had bound everyone for years and left them racking their brains suddenly became clear. Research that had previously stagnated was abruptly filled with inspiration and fantastical ideas.
Monitor Raiden Mei? Cocolia's orders?
Fuck that!
"Everyone! For the welfare of all humanity, this old man shall lead the charge!!!"
The head of the research team, an elderly man nearing seventy, raised both arms with a ferocious expression.
"OOOHHHHH!!!"
Even among the Anti-Entropy Reformists, who were known for their radicalism, there were many opponents of Cocolia's plan this time.
First, she had used underhanded methods to get rid of Raiden Ryoma, another Executor. Then she intended to use the several million people of Changkong City for an enormous experiment.
Of course, that was not what they would say publicly.
The Third Honkai involved far too wide a scope. At present, only Anti-Entropy's Executor class and Cocolia's absolute confidants were qualified to know about it.
Even when facing these subordinates, the reason Cocolia gave was merely human experimentation within a limited range.
Yet even so, the radicals still thought she was too radical.
If that woman's status had not been too high to refuse, eleven out of every ten people present would not have come. The negative one who came along would only be slacking off and dragging that blonde vixen's plans down.
After all, human experimentation was inherently politically incorrect within Anti-Entropy.
Back then, Schicksal's North American Branch had broken away from Schicksal under the banner of "Schicksal uses human experimentation to persecute Valkyries," establishing the Anti-Entropy of today and vigorously developing numerous mechanical technologies symbolized by Titan Mechs.
With ideas flowing like a spring under those circumstances, and veteran experts who had been in the organization for decades leading the charge, the researchers naturally busied themselves with fervent enthusiasm.
If nothing unexpected happened, with the monitoring staff neglecting their duties, Fu Li and the others should theoretically have been able to leave Changkong City without a sound.
Unfortunately, a cunning rabbit had three burrows.
Cocolia, who had risen to the position of Leader of Anti-Entropy Reformists, could not possibly have failed to arrange backup measures in advance.
The door to the monitoring room opened, and a petite, adorable girl "walked" into the room.
Her pure silver-gray short hair, like a galaxy, was tied into two single Roman curls that hung behind her. In the dim fluorescent light, the silver sheen inside and outside her hair carried an ash-gold texture.
Her delicate, pretty face wore a calm and indifferent expression, while her petite, exquisite body radiated a cold aura that kept strangers away.
Expressionlessly, she walked over to the instruments and reached out to silence the piercing alarm.
She then activated the replay function and took in everything that had happened on the rooftop earlier.
"Take This, Great Sage Kiana's Staff!"
"Here."
The moment they stepped out of the room, the big white cat with "happy" written all over her face handed over the neatly folded clothes.
They had been folded very tidily and carefully arranged.
Fu Li held his sword without even looking at them. "Keep them yourself. I'm afraid the scent of beautiful girls on them will make youthful me lose control and do something earth-shattering to them."
Mei rubbed her forehead at the side. With that mouth of Fu Li's, she truly did not know how to describe him.
Was this part of the Sword Saint's inheritance too?
The girl suddenly did not look forward to encountering it herself anymore.
"Then I'll put them in my Fourth-Dimensional Skirt."
Kiana felt that he was just spouting nonsense. If he really had those kinds of thoughts, could he still say something like that?
After carefully sizing Fu Li up a few times, the girl sharply furrowed her brows. "You're in a bad mood?"
"Yeah, yeah. I thought I'd get to enjoy a beautiful-girl changing-clothes play, but the people involved shut me out directly." Fu Li sighed toward the sky. "Is this what being a simp gets you? I treat you to food for free, and I don't even get a fan-service scene."
"Someone did claim their gender was an Attack Helicopter, you know?"
"You're actually shutting out an Attack Helicopter too!"
"Who told him to hang two 4K cameras off himself and film everywhere?"
Kiana rolled her eyes seductively at Fu Li, then took his hand and Mei's on her own initiative.
"Alright, alright, stop bickering. Come on, I'm so hungry my stomach's flat!"
Holding yellow in her left hand and lifting blue in her right, she pulled them downstairs at a run, greeting quite a few familiar tenants along the way.
Those people all stared in horror at Fu Li, who was holding hands with Kiana, thinking, Fuck, did this kid really win the beauty's heart?
If I'd known she was this easy to woo, I would've tried too!
What to eat for lunch had always been one of life's three great philosophical questions, alongside what to eat for breakfast and what to eat for dinner.
Kiana did not have that problem. As a little gluttonous cat with a keen sense of smell, she pulled Fu Li and Mei forward at full speed and arrived at the largest snack street nearby in a flash.
"I came! I saw! I conquered!"
Standing at the street entrance, the white-haired girl spread her arms as if this place were the entire world.
She said impatiently, "Let's eat our way through everything here! We can only hit the road after we're full!"
"Then we should start with Pork Cutlet Rice." Fu Li kindly offered the suggestion.
"Sure, sure!" Kiana clapped happily.
"Wait! Isn't Pork Cutlet Rice what death row inmates eat?"
"You said we were hitting the road, didn't you? Hey, let go, let go!"
The trio of high school students stood out quite a bit on this street. The secondary reason was that two of them were peerlessly beautiful supergirls, while the primary reason was that the white-haired one was hugging the black-haired boy's head and gnawing on it like crazy.
Their noisy commotion made quite a few people instinctively keep their distance. Combined with a crowd gathered in the distance doing who knew what, the sparse pedestrian flow was quickly divided into two distinct streams.
Kiana, who had her legs wrapped around Fu Li's waist as she furiously gnawed on his head, found time to glance over there. She swayed strangely as she asked, "What are those people gathered around for? It's lunchtime and they're not eating. Aren't they hungry?"
"You really do have nothing but food on your mind."
Mei took out a tissue and carefully wiped the saliva off Fu Li's forehead.
After tossing the crumpled tissue into a trash can, she asked curiously, "Come to think of it, Kiana, you seem very familiar with the terrain around here?"
"I have to keep an eye on some guy who crossed the sea from Shenzhou, don't I?" The white-haired ball of fluff spoke sarcastically about a certain Fu. "That guy meddles in other people's business all day. If I don't get this sort of intelligence straight, what if something really happens and I can't find him?"
"Then thank you."
Now it was Fu Li's turn to feel awkward.
Who would have thought that the reason this little gluttonous cat knew the surrounding environment like the back of her hand was so that she could pull this troublemaker out of danger in time when it mattered?
"Thanks? No need for that."
The white-haired girl hanging from him waved her hand without a care. "Whenever I arrive somewhere during my travels, I always get a handle on the surrounding situation right away. Helping you was just something I did along the way."
Kiana, who had wandered alone for four years, said it was basic stuff, no need to make a fuss.
Fu Li felt even more awkward.
He had been flattering himself.
Before you continue