Where's the Third Honkai We Were Promised?!!

That was precisely why, on the narrow bridge of becoming stronger, everyone who didn't want to die, didn't want to be surpassed by those who came later, and didn't want to be left behind had no choice but to compete. Compete desperately. Compete with brutal intensity.

If you didn't study, if you gave up, if your blade rusted, then someone more competitive than you could utterly crush you, seize everything you had, and make it their own. So tell me, would you study or not?

"You say that in the Shiranui state, I can challenge opponents above my level. But how could those people who compete their way to levels even higher than mine possibly lack techniques, methods, weapons, and armor of the same caliber?"

Fu Li shook his head slightly. "Everyone seeks peace of mind. If you fail the college entrance exams, you can try again. Those with lower ambitions can be diverted into technical schools and muddle through. So long as you're willing to endure hardship, modern Shenzhou society won't let you starve to death no matter what."

You only got one life. Once it was gone, it was truly gone.

"That's why the Honkai side produces so many freaks. Their minds are constantly tense as though preparing for the college entrance exams. It'd be stranger if that didn't drive a few people insane."

By the end, he even made a harmless joke. "I remember they gave me a certificate during my last mental evaluation. I didn't read it, though. I just tore it up."

Fu Li was smiling, but Prometheus, who was worried about her host's mental state, couldn't smile at all.

Before her eyes, she seemed to see a massive labyrinth. Within it, a group of people ran forward without regard for their lives, while behind them rolled a boulder large enough to crush everyone to dust.

The speeding boulder occasionally crushed those who ran too slowly, while more people emerged from other corners of the labyrinth and joined the running crowd.

Everyone was competing, so competition itself no longer had any meaning. But if someone chose not to compete, they would be crushed and eliminated immediately, without question.

The girl told her host what she thought. After considering it, Fu Li replied, "That's not wrong, but you should add an exit at the end of the labyrinth. An exit called S-rank, where one can escape the maze and gain the right to control one's own fate."

S-rank?!

Little AI's heart trembled. After snapping out of it, she was just about to question her host thoroughly.

A sound came from nearby.

The human and AI whose conversation had been interrupted raised their heads and looked in that direction with remarkable synchronization.

A hooded figure carrying a rectangular storage case was slowly walking toward them.

"Famous Sword: Mikazuki Munechika"

Seeing the hooded figure approach, Fu Li immediately got up to greet them.

His gaze swiftly fell upon the item in their hands. His usually placid eyes revealed a trace of unusual excitement, like a train pervert encountering a voluptuous married woman on the way to work, greedily staring at that tantalizing fullness with barely restrained impatience.

"Hey! Could you stop describing it like that?!"

The innocent victim, who had been standing there all along, loudly protested against the scummy AI's slander.

"Prometheus merely described how the host looked when he saw them. Why is the host reacting so strongly?" Little AI shot him a sidelong glance, her lips curling in malicious teasing. "Could it be... that you have a guilty conscience?"

"Guilty conscience, my ass! Even getting up normally to greet someone gets twisted into this. I don't even dare imagine what you'd say if something actually happened later!" Fu Li resisted the urge to roll his eyes in front of the hooded figure. "And where did you even pick up all these random terms? I clearly never had you scan my memories!"

"The host just rode the train. There were many observation subjects in the carriage."

The little fellow thoroughly demonstrated through her actions what it meant to say that reading ten thousand books was not as good as traveling ten thousand miles.

While the unfortunate host and his treacherous AI bickered mentally, the hooded figure slowly arrived before them.

They gave Fu Li, whose expression kept changing, a suspicious look. After thinking for a moment, they quietly took a large step back.

"This is all your fault. Great, now they think I'm mentally ill!"

Faced with the complaints of a certified lunatic, Little AI answered solemnly, "Actually, Prometheus is merely a product of the host's schizophrenia. The host never awakened any End-of-World Assistance System at all."

"Then why not say that everything in front of me is a hallucination I had before dying, and that my real body is lying in a hospital bed receiving end-of-life care?"

Fu Li decided to stop paying attention to this nonsense-spouting duckhead and instead looked at the storage case held by the hooded figure. "Everything's here?"

The other person silently nodded, reached out, and lifted the lid.

Famous artifact, Mikazuki Munechika. The final protective treasure blade of Ashikaga Yoshiteru, the thirteenth shogun of the Far East Muromachi Shogunate. Curved blade, blade length 80 cm. Cold and simple as frost, slender and sharp, like flowing moonlight. Even after hundreds of years, it could still cut iron like mud and sever gold and jade.

That was what the label beside the tachi said.

It could only be said that the Far Easterners had some skill. When praising their own treasures, they truly went all out.

Prometheus noticed something strange from the label. She bit her lip and asked tentatively, "Host, was this sword... taken directly from a Far East museum by the Foundation?"

The forging process for a tachi involved a smith forging the blade and the integrated tang first, then attaching the koshirae, which consisted of the hilt, guard, scabbard, and other components.

This structure meant that once the wooden koshirae was removed, the metal blade could be preserved for a long time without corroding.

In other words, blades whose koshirae had been specifically removed to prevent corrosion were generally antiques with some age to them.

Combined with the label beside it, as well as the fact that Mikazuki Munechika, one of the true Five Blades Under Heaven, had always been kept in the Far East National Museum, it was hard not to think in strange directions.

"Stolen from a museum? Probably."

Fu Li handled the famous sword without its koshirae like an auntie or uncle picking out produce at a market, speaking as he examined it.

"Don't be too surprised. The Future Fund is among the very best of the mid-sized organizations. And the Far East after World War II was universally acknowledged to be full of holes. Schicksal established branches there, Anti-Entropy stationed troops there—so what if they took the Five Blades Under Heaven?"

He picked up the label and examined it repeatedly. "All I can say is, they had it coming. They refused to behave like decent people and insisted on acting like beasts."

Sure enough, there was a note left on the back of the label by the hooded figure in rough Chinese characters.

This tachi came with the skill Five Blades Under Heaven, which could greatly increase physical attack power by consuming weapon durability.

Furthermore, when wielded by someone with a resolute mind, Mikazuki Munechika would produce an intimidating pressure that could damage incorporeal beings such as spirits and elemental lifeforms to a certain extent.

It should also be noted that although the weapon itself was hard and sharp enough to easily sever limbs and behead people, its extremely light weight and thin blade construction made it difficult for it to break through thick, hard materials when chopping.

Prometheus summarized simply, "Specialized against living beings, suppresses the mind, scratches machines."

She seemed to have naturally decided that Fu Li was a mentally resolute person who met Mikazuki's activation requirements.

"Against that big fox, Kikyo, this anti-biological specialization is exactly what I need."

After giving the sword a simple inspection, Fu Li looked at the jade resting quietly in another groove of the storage case.

Perhaps worried that he did not know how to use it, the hooded figure carefully explained, "Hold it in your hand and crush it."

Like the skills obtained through the End-of-World Assistance System's lottery, the skill sealed within the jade required no additional time to learn.

Crack!

Fu Li crushed the jade on the spot, quickly reviewed the memories that had appeared in his mind, and after confirming everything was correct, stored Mikazuki Munechika inside the Galaxy Bat, which also functioned as a scabbard. Then he turned and headed outside the train engine.

The hooded figure silently watched his back until he disappeared beyond the door.

There had been no unnecessary communication between them from start to finish. That was what professionalism meant, wasn't it?

"Oh, right." Remembering something, Fu Li poked his head in through the train window like a cat. "I hope there'll be a few more teammates this time."

Unexpectedly, the hooded figure, who had been calm all along, looked as though their defenses had been utterly shattered upon hearing those words.

She tried hard to cough, hiding the bitter curve constantly tugging at her delicate lips beneath the hood.

"May your words come true."

Leaving Kisaragi Station was no longer as troublesome as getting there had been. After simply changing trains three times, the afternoon sunlight fell across Fu Li's shoulders.

"Three in the afternoon."

Standing amid the crowd, he rubbed his stomach. With great conscience, he did not seek out a buffet restaurant to bully ordinary people, instead finding a nearby Chinese restaurant.

After ordering the cheapest, most filling Yangzhou fried rice at the counter, Prometheus asked curiously, "What did you mean by what you said before leaving the station?"

"Exactly what it sounded like. I hope that when the three-year deadline arrives, among these twenty-one people who made wishes, there'll be a few more teammates capable of carrying out the Future Fund's confidential missions."

Having found a seat and sat down, Fu Li thought for a moment, then stopped wiping the table with a napkin in surprise.

"Prometheus, you don't seriously think all twenty-one of those people who took on debt before even taking on debt will safely survive until the mission begins, do you?"

"Fu Li's Little Great-Aunt"

"...Prometheus, you don't seriously think all twenty-one of those people who took on debt before even taking on debt will safely survive until the mission begins, do you?"

Huh? Wasn't that the case?

Little AI wanted to answer that way, but seeing Fu Li's face filled with disbelief made irritation rise within her.

She huffed. "Of course not!"

"Exactly."

"Thanks~"

Accepting the clearly oversized serving of fried rice from the waiter, Fu Li wolfed it down while saying in his heart, "According to the intelligence broker's records, under normal circumstances, fewer than one in ten people who spend three years alone on the Honkai side without attaching themselves to other factions survive. Most of those who find a Foundation branch are geniuses, and geniuses love nothing more than snatching chestnuts from the fire and seeking wealth amid danger."

The little girl quietly recited the second half of the proverb. "Seek wealth in danger, and lose it in danger too. One in ten gains it; nine in ten lose it."

"See? Stack those probabilities together."

Smack!

Fu Li set down his empty plate. "Boss! Another serving! This time, bring it in a basin!"

After ordering another serving of fried rice, he stated with certainty, "Out of twenty-one people, it'd already be pretty good if five or six remained in the end."

No wonder the moment the host mentioned this, that person immediately wore such a bitter expression, like Sister-in-law Zelian.

Prometheus fell into thought.

If they still tirelessly conducted this kind of loss-making business under such circumstances, then the Future Fund was either foolishly rich, or it wanted something enormous.

Bzzzt—!

The phone on the table suddenly vibrated.

Fu Li, who was eating as though taking revenge, glanced at the lit-up phone screen and ignored it.

After coming back to herself, Little AI warmly suggested, "Host, shouldn't you take a look?"

"I know what it is. I'll deal with it after I finish eating." That was how the reborn man answered.

Prometheus nodded and sat beside him, accompanying him through this belated lunch.

Fu Li had always found it strange. Logically speaking, Prometheus was projected directly onto his retina rather than manifested in the real world, so what was the point of her floating around everywhere like this?

But whenever he saw the little girl's adorable face, pretending to be expressionless while faint traces of expectation surfaced beneath it, he felt it would be better not to deliberately ask such a stupid question that would definitely lower her favorability.

Her face was still completely pixelated, but the eyes were the windows to the soul.

It was three in the afternoon, not a busy mealtime, so the restaurant owner said nothing to Fu Li for lingering after finishing his meal.

After wiping his mouth clean with a napkin, Fu Li, full and satisfied, picked up his phone and opened the Old Fu Family Happy Forever VX group that had tagged him earlier.

The general meaning of the chat was that a senior elder in the family was coming to Changkong City to watch a world-class superstar, Eden's, concert tour. Someone happened to remember that Fu Li was in the Far East, so they asked whether he could help look after her.

"That Little Great-Aunt really is coming after all."

Even though he had long known the cause and course of the matter, Fu Li was still speechless after reading through the chat log.

Prometheus raised her little face. "I remember the host saying that you don't have a good relationship with your family."

"Rather than saying the relationship is bad, it's more that they basically act as though I don't exist... That Little Great-Aunt is the sole exception. That's why they came to me."

Fu Li rubbed his forehead. "It's not like the two of us are particularly familiar, either. In fact, I've only seen selfies of her checking in at various influencer hotspots while scrolling through Moments. We've never formally met at all."

"The main thing is, she has—well, here." He raised a hand and pointed at his head. "She has a tiny little problem here. She's the sort of super central air conditioner who's extremely friendly to everyone. Even someone like me can't escape her range."

Prometheus felt favorably inclined toward her. "She sounds like a very kind elder."

Fu Li said, "She is indeed an elder, but only in terms of seniority. She's actually the same age as me."

Little AI was speechless. "Also sixteen? A sixteen-year-old great-aunt?"

In Shenzhou, great-aunt referred to one's great-grandfather's daughter, or the sisters of one's grandfather's generation.

"How else could she be called Little Great-Aunt?" Fu Li lazily propped his chin on one hand and pushed the phone displaying Moments toward Prometheus with the other. "There, look. She's got nothing better to do and posted another selfie."

The girl eagerly leaned over, and her pupils suddenly shrank to pinpricks.

The picture showed a pink-haired girl dressed very fashionably.

She sat beside the window in a milk tea shop, a smug smile blooming on her pretty face. Her deep blue eyes, adorned with specks of star-like powder, shone brightly. Under the background lighting, her fair cheeks were draped in a gauzy orange glow that made people unable to resist becoming immersed in them.

The girl's top was quite loose, and one smooth, milky-white shoulder peeked out from her collar. She mischievously stuck out her tongue at the camera and closed one eye, making her long eyelashes especially conspicuous.

She also casually made a V-sign. In that instant, the vitality and youthful liveliness unique to her age leaped off the screen, with even a hint of childlike innocence and cuteness.

"Love..."

Prometheus instinctively began to say a name, then suddenly clenched her teeth shut and forcibly swallowed the remaining syllables.