Su Qing'an Was Still as Direct as Ever

Canghai City Airport.

1:30 PM.

Su Qing'an helped the girl carry her heavy luggage, while Fu Hua nervously gripped the straps of her handbag with both hands. Everything in front of her was so new yet so real.

An overly wide avenue, a towering dome that is almost invisible, high-tech interiors, and unified intelligent management.

A clear map was projected onto a slightly surreal, self-rotating projection. Several riot control robots, waiting to scan the crowd, also served as rescue workers. The hurried people exuded a tense atmosphere that was absent in that small city.

With each breath, the cold metallic touch surged into my chest. The airport's heating was clearly comforting, but the faint chill still cut through my body.

The temperature, seemingly adjusted by a smart system, had been invaded by the harsh winter outside, turning it into a biting cold. The invisible, colorless snow piled up under her feet, making it difficult for the girl to walk, and she was somewhat dazed.

After glancing at the boy beside her, the psychological pressure vanished instantly, and the girl suddenly stopped feeling intimidated by the unfamiliar surroundings.

In that instant, Fu Hua fully realized how different coming alone would be from her current situation.

A heartfelt sense of gratitude and budding feelings slowly fermented.

Unlike the massive damage caused by Su Qing'an's blunt remark on the plane, the current situation, which is naturally accepted by self-awareness, is gradually peeling away the fog surrounding their relationship.

They walked side by side through the bustling crowd, like two fish that had overcome countless obstacles to meet in a vast ocean.

"A little unaccustomed, aren't you?" Su Qing'an dragged two huge boxes that Fu Xiuran had stuffed full of various items, her breathing still steady as she spoke.

Clearly, even if the boy had run for half an hour with [Thousand Stars] before boarding the plane, his physical fitness would not be affected by this amount of weight.

Perhaps only at this moment did Su Qing'an suddenly realize that he and the boy he once was had completely diverged into two entirely different lives over those seemingly short years.

Only...

He has no regrets.

"Just a little bit," the girl said somewhat defiantly, her hands slowly loosening their grip on the handbag strap as if trying to cover up evidence.

Seeing Fu Hua's expression, Su Qing'an felt a pang of urge to pat her head, but glancing at his own empty hands, he regretfully abandoned the tempting offer. He thought for a moment and said:

"It's okay, Hua is cute and kind. You'll definitely find like-minded friends at the academy."

"Get used to the city before you do. Maybe Canghai City isn't as scary as you think."

Fu Hua whispered:

"It's not as simple as Su Qing'an makes it out to be, and I'm not as good as Su Qing'an makes it out to be."

"I'm just an ordinary, somewhat unremarkable person."

Rather than attributing this to a deep-seated inferiority complex, it's more accurate to describe it as Fu Hua's sincere inner monologue.

Su Qing'an understood this deeply, so he neither intended to correct it nor felt there was any need to.

The boy here simply chose to state his opinion:

"Hua is different from others, that's without a doubt."

"I haven't told you this before, but the Void Sword Qi isn't something just anyone can master. Even if this manual were uploaded to the internet and known to the whole world, the number of humans who could cultivate it to the point of mastering the Sword Heart at your pace wouldn't exceed ten."

"So from this perspective, it's not ordinary at all."

Fu Hua was somewhat taken aback upon hearing this, as she had never felt any particularly difficult stages in her cultivation of the Void Sword Qi.

Whether it was the cultivation of the Sword Heart Technique or the initial formation of the Sword Heart, it all seemed like a natural progression.

The girl vaguely sensed that martial arts like the Void Sword Qi were not as simple as she had imagined, but the example Su Qing'an presented was unexpected.

But beyond the surprise, there was a profound sense of emptiness, as if it were all unreal.

Even with the initial ability to manipulate Qi, and even enough to apply it within her family's martial arts techniques, these are merely tools for fighting and brawling, and are ultimately dispensable to Fu Hua.

Just as she had initially thought when she first heard about the Void Sword Qi, its performance in cooking was probably more impressive than its other effects, which would likely earn it a higher score on Fu Hua's list of practical applications.

In such an era, the importance of individual combat strength has become too insignificant. Transplanting a military-grade prosthetic limb with an intelligent calibration system is enough to surpass so-called martial artists.

What use is the power of the Void Sword Qi, no matter how strong it is? Even if its potential is higher, in the girl's eyes at this moment, it is a secret destined to be locked in her heart.

It's like a plate of seemingly elaborately decorated pastries, but when you cut it open, there's only an empty cavity and slowly flowing quicksand inside.

For a 15-year-old girl, this item is probably less practical than a hair tie.

This is a perfectly normal concept. In the everyday life before the Honkai, so-called superhuman strength is something that is dispensable to a little girl like her.

After all, her Inch Heart Fist was sufficient for any crisis that might occur in daily life from the very beginning.

Su Qing'an understood this himself, so he never deliberately made the girl speed up her cultivation progress.

Moreover, she has already reached a bottleneck, and if she doesn't encounter some challenges, she will likely remain in State of Still Water for a long time.

Such a bottleneck cannot be overcome by simply practicing the Sword Heart Technique, so Su Qing'an naturally wouldn't let her accelerate her pace further.

Fu Hua said matter-of-factly:

"That kind of extraordinary quality can't be used to make friends."

Su Qing'an gazed at the road ahead and continued speaking, his words unfinished:

"Even disregarding that aspect, 'Hua' is not a word that can be easily summarized in my context."

"You look so cute when you're carefully adjusting your bow tie in front of the mirror. When you tie your hair up, the skin on your neck is so delicate and fair. When you talk to me, you like to look me straight in the eye, and your eyes are like clear lake water, making me want to hold them close..."

Then the girl covered the boy's lips with her hand, forcing him to swallow his heartfelt words.

She glanced around discreetly, her delicate skin flushed a deep rosy hue, like a spreading mist.

Fu Hua whispered urgently in Su Qing'an's ear:

"Stop talking, Master Su, this is too embarrassing!"

"No one normally compliments someone like that!"

The boy breathed on her soft palm, and Fu Hua immediately released her hand as if she had been electrocuted. A look of disgust appeared on her face as if she had seen a bad guy, and then she blushed and took a few steps back.

Su Qing'an put down his suitcase, and in the brief moment of being swept away by the allure, he took out his phone and captured the scene in a photograph.

After this series of swift and fluid movements, he casually put his phone back in his pocket and calmly continued:

I wasn't praising you; I was just telling the truth.

That's the truth, then it's alright.

No! That's a much bigger problem!

The girl immediately overturned her previous erroneous conclusion, feeling that the impact she had received from Master Su today was simply too great.

This confused her so much that she didn't notice the strange little movements the other person made while using [Thousand Stars] for a second.

Compared to the usual sweetness, today's barrage of sweetness is almost lethal, so it's no wonder that the overly innocent girl couldn't handle it.

As for why Su Qing'an maintained his composure, it was naturally because he had never encountered any decent offensive attacks. He had always been the one serving the straight ball and had never encountered a moment when he needed to return to defense.

The girl lowered her eyes and whispered quietly:

"You can't say the truth in public like that."

Upon hearing this, Su Qing'an's lips curled into a slight smile.

Seeing that the other person hadn't noticed his earlier sneaky photo, he began to consider whether he should set that photo as his screensaver.

Actually, Su Qing'an had been doing this kind of thing on and off ever since she got a cell phone. The only thing on this phone besides that note was the photo of Fu Hua that she had taken before.

For this reason, Su Qing'an began to pick up the photography skills that she had only dabbled in before.

In that brief moment, the photograph had already captured the subject's charm flawlessly.

It can be described as a combination of various skills and physical qualities, which can capture excellent photos in an instant, with the probability of error appearing to be zero based on current cases.

Su Qing'an continued:

"In short, although it seems like a lot has been said, whether someone is ordinary or not is not the key to making friends."

"When it comes to making friends, Hua only needs to take the first step."

"There are many people like Lin Xinchán who are willing to be Hua's friends, but Hua himself doesn't give them the opportunity to get close. Even if others like to be friends with you, they will feel uncomfortable because of this unapproachable distance."

The boy looked at the silent Fu Hua, his gaze softening further:

"Hua understands these principles himself, but choosing to change and step out of his comfort zone is another matter. You should have felt the changes in yourself during your time practicing the Sword Heart Technique."

"The prerequisite for entering the State of Still Water is to understand one's own mind and nature. Gradually, you have seen through some aspects of yourself from another perspective, and you have already changed."

"So I'm not worried about Hua's school life."

"But... if anything happy happens, please tell me about it."

As the boy spoke, his gaze abruptly drifted to a distant horizon. His tone was as gentle as the soft touch of fingertips on a piano, making the girl's heartbeat even clearer as it reached her ears. She nodded, looked up, and said:

"If... Su Qing'an doesn't tease me too much, I'll tell you later."

"Okay, sure."

The two stepped into the slightly crowded flow of people. Their words were torn apart by fragmented sounds, like snowflakes, yet they still gently fell on each other's ears, as if to do not betray the emotional outpouring between them.

After getting into a taxi in the airport's underground area and giving them the school's address, the two people sitting together in the back seat looked out the window at the bustling city that resembled a steel jungle.

This scene was unprecedentedly grand for both Su Qing'an and Fu Hua.

Only here did Su Qing'an realize with unprecedented clarity that this was the era of a Previous Civilization that had already fallen in later generations.

In the near future, this place will become the vast ruins that the boy once saw.

Death and the end of the world will engulf it.

He glanced at the map on his phone, watching his location get further and further away from the airport, and recalled past events.

During his first life-or-death escape from the Zombie, he never noticed how he ended up in that underground ruin.

However, in the intelligent map inside the airport, Su Qing'an discovered an underground shelter with a familiar structure.

If it weren't for an accident, that would have been the place where he and Fu Hua first met.

Based on Fu Hua's previous words, we know that she encountered the Honkai outbreak just before boarding the plane, so going to the underground shelter set up inside the airport was indeed the safest and most reasonable choice.

But this time... what should he choose?

Hua's eventual survival proves that the Moth to Fire truly came to her rescue.

Therefore, theoretically, staying in place would allow one to legitimately join the Moth to Fire.

However, given his own Stigmata and extraordinary combat abilities, and the current situation where the technology of immortals and Stigmata seem to be underdeveloped, whether he can truly coexist peacefully with his opponent is a practical matter that needs to be considered.

Based on his limited understanding of the scattered darkness, this era is no more civilized or humane than his original world.

The aftershocks of a sudden collapse of an authoritarian society will continue to reverberate, and under such circumstances, it is not surprising that one might become a human experimental subject for the other side.

Even in unique cases, one cannot avoid the unexpected actions that the other party might take in an emergency.

Therefore, Su Qing'an can selectively trust some people, but she will not entrust her life to an organization called Moth to Fire or the United Nations itself.

This was the major premise that Su Qing'an defined for his actions, but joining the Moth to Fire was an inevitable thing.

Assuming Fu Hua became immortal through the Moth of Moth to Fire, Su Qing'an, who himself yearned for immortality, couldn't ignore this factor.

If only I knew about some of the key figures from the Previous Civilization in advance, I could have made much better plans and taken advantage of the information gap than just going around in circles like this.

However, perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing that Su Qing'an was able to accompany Fu Hua through this short but peaceful period of daily life with a clear conscience.

After experiencing the double event of getting off the plane and Fu Xiuran on the phone, Fu Hua suddenly remembered Lin Xinchán, whom he had been ignoring all along.

So she briefly explained her current situation via text message.

The resulting reactions are as follows.

[Who would agree to such an outrageous request?! Σ(っ°Д°;)っ]

[Su Qing'an is clearly acting strangely!]

[Aaaaaah, could it be that you'll already be married by the time I get out? Waaaaah, how did you get so far ahead, Hua?]

He harbors deep resentment in every sense of the word.