Su Qing'an had considered killing Raiden Mei.
The Honkai in Changkong City had originally been a "man-made" Honkai outbreak planned by Cocolia at Senba Academy to awaken the power within Raiden Mei.
So theoretically, if Raiden Mei were killed, Cocolia's plan would be completely ruined, and the so-called [man-made] Honkai outbreak would collapse on its own.
Changkong City could then be saved.
How should the lives of more than 2.3 million people be weighed against the life of one girl?
With only him knowing the future, the weights of life and the scales had appeared before Su Qing'an.
No one had told him, "Come on, Su Qing'an, choose quickly! If you don't choose, do you still have any humanity?" or anything like that.
Yet when you had the right to choose and still gave it up, that in itself was no easy thing.
The city was so peaceful and harmonious. The lively high school girl who occasionally came to the coffee shop, the orange cat lazily sunbathing on the street, the people who went to and from work day after day just to make a living, the children playing and fooling around in the park, the deliveryman next door who had worked three jobs just to surprise his girlfriend, the lonely old woman looking forward to her son coming home to visit tomorrow.
All of it was telling Su Qing'an.
It was telling him what price he would pay for choosing nothing—for fleeing from reality.
This has nothing to do with you.
You're not even from this world. What does the death or survival of this world's humans have to do with you?
You've already worked hard enough. You've already died twice, haven't you?
Now, at long last, you can be confident that you'll survive in an environment where the Honkai has erupted.
None of this concerns you.
Why not kill Raiden Mei instead? She's only a fifteen-year-old girl.
Shut up.
Your Taixuan Style is already strong enough. You don't even need to face her head-on. As long as you used the reason your teacher had given you to become friends with her and bypass the surveillance of Cocolia's subordinates, you would only need one sword strike. If she wasn't paying attention, she would die.
I can't do something like that. I'm just an ordinary person. I have no right to decide her fate.
With the Honkai Energy concentration still insufficient to awaken the Third Herrscher core, the Gem of Conquest, Raiden Mei was nothing more than a girl who knew a little ancient martial arts.
Su Qing'an, kill one person to save millions.
Even if I don't fit in with this world, I still hate social death, so shut up.
Don't think about stopping the Honkai by dealing with Cocolia's subordinates.
Even the yakuza in Japan had automatic rifles. Do you think you can take a sword, kill your way through them seven times in and seven times out, and save the world?
You think you've become stronger, but you're only at this level.
Bullets would make you bleed when they hit you, and you would still die if a blade struck a vital point.
Martial arts are too weak.
Even a martial artist like Chen Junxuan could fight a hundred people bare-handed, but so what? Physical strength had limits, and the human body had limits.
As long as your dodging speed was a fraction too slow, technological weapons could crush your fragile body.
Shut up. You're so annoying.
If you wanted to save Changkong City, the simplest method from the very beginning was to kill Raiden Mei. After that, whether you fled or fought, you would be able to handle everything with ease.
I said, shut up.
As for directly taking down Cocolia's subordinates and stopping the Honkai through violence, the information gap left him no choice aside from confronting them head-on.
And in a head-on confrontation, the chance of death was infinitely close to one hundred percent.
Mind Lake surged like a stormy sea. Chaotic distracting thoughts circled through his mind. In the end, he opened his eyes, and the Sword Heart Technique he had been silently reciting came to an abrupt stop.
Mind Lake suddenly became calm.
At that moment, no one could empathize with Su Qing'an.
Just as no one could understand the unreal feeling of falling through empty space in Kiana's heart, and no one could understand how much expectation and weight Murata Himeko carried on her shoulders.
Only Su Qing'an himself could understand the torment he was facing.
The Void Sword Qi left behind by the god had already begun to reveal its flaws. He had originally been someone who sought only self-preservation, but during these days, all sorts of distracting thoughts had surged wildly into his mind. The moment he failed to hold firm, his sword heart would shatter.
The Inner Demon's suggestion to kill Mei was simply too idiotic. According to the plot, Bronya should have been monitoring Mei under Cocolia's orders at this time. If Su Qing'an made a move, he would very likely be shot dead.
Yet the Inner Demon kept making such absurd suggestions, leaving him restless and agitated, his mind wavering.
As for stopping the Honkai outbreak—
If this were a hot-blooded, chosen-one manga, the protagonist might ignore the gap in strength, shout something about surpassing his limits, and go save the world.
But Su Qing'an understood the limits of his own abilities. He would suffer because he was unable to save Changkong City, but he would never regret it.
When all was said and done, this was simply a fucked-up world.
The only thing Su Qing'an could hold on to was his own life. As for how much of anything beyond that he could grasp, he would grasp as much as he could.
He now understood how the Inner Demon of the modified Void Sword Qi differed from ordinary cultivation deviation, in which one became a Zombie. Its purpose was to temper—and even destroy—the sword heart.
This indecision, this pain, and this helplessness tormented him.
Yet every intense emotion became nourishment for the Sword Heart Technique.
Become stronger. Become stronger. Become stronger. Reach the limit he could surpass as quickly as possible.
Then draw his sword and throw his fists.
Until his sword heart became completely flawless.
Raiden Mei was sixteen years old this year and a second-year student at Senba Academy.
As the only daughter of Raiden Ryoma, the president of ME Corp, Raiden Mei possessed innate beauty, a noble air cultivated from childhood, and an exalted birth. Without a doubt, she had the pride of a young lady. It wasn't the vulgar arrogance displayed on the surface, but a genuine haughtiness that existed deep in her bones.
That pride did not make people dislike her.
Mei's pride manifested in her elegant and polite treatment of others, the certain distance she maintained in her manner, and the confidence born of her family.
But a month ago, her life had undergone a turning point.
Her father, Raiden Ryoma, had been imprisoned for an economic crime, and the classmates who had once surrounded her with admiration quickly became cold toward her.
The enormous contrast caused Raiden Mei's personality to change in less than a month. She became more sensitive to everything around her, and her former cheerfulness gradually turned into a degree of aloofness.
Aside from her worry about her father and the freezing of the family assets, the complete collapse of her relationships at school was the main cause.
"That's the rumored young lady, Raiden Mei, right?"
"I heard her father, Raiden Ryoma, went to prison for economic crimes."
"Really? And she still acts so aloof."
"Her assets were probably frozen too. They were filthy funds obtained through fraud, after all. Forget being a young lady—her life will probably start falling apart sooner or later, right?"
Suspicion, gossip, jealousy, malice.
Rumors grew with every retelling, and three people could make a tiger. Public opinion was the most terrifying thing of all. Humans were social animals, and the careless mutterings of a few students had turned the atmosphere of the entire academy into this.
Asuka Miyuki had suffered from this right up until her death. For Raiden Mei now, it was even worse.
People often didn't care what the truth actually was.
The once-unattainable flower, Raiden Mei, had fallen into the mud. That alone was interesting enough for malice to spread unchecked.
No one cared about the thoughts of the person involved. Empathy might exist somewhere in their hearts, but when they discussed these things, they never considered the harm their words caused.
She understood that defending herself would be meaningless. Remaining silent was the only way she could preserve her dignity.
Almost no one dared to oppose the atmosphere and speak the truth.
That was how Raiden Mei understood it, until—
"Hey, is it really that interesting to discuss this in front of other people? I've wanted to say this for a long time. People who love gossiping are seriously annoying."
The speaker was a foreign-looking girl. With pupils as cold as a frozen lake, she stared directly at the female student who had been gossiping openly. The pressure she gave off was utterly beyond the level of an ordinary high school girl.
That was in addition to the reputation of this transfer student.
The incident in which she had recently transferred to the school and survived unscathed at the hands of a serial killer had already spread throughout Senba Academy.
That was all the police had announced publicly.
In fact, internally, Kiana had been judged to have acted in self-defense and was acquitted.
Cases involving Honkai Energy were handled with entirely different efficiency.
As for Kiana's reputation, there were even rumors that this seemingly harmless girl could kick hard enough to shatter a human leg bone.
And yes, that was true.
"It's Kiana! I-I'm sorry..." Recognizing Kiana, the female student, intimidated by her terrifying presence and reputation, immediately dragged her companion into a bow and apologized before hurriedly running away.
Watching the girl's departing back indifferently, the cold-faced girl was clearly somewhat displeased.
Asuka Miyuki's incident had ultimately affected Kiana.
Perhaps she would not have interfered in the past.
But now, whenever she saw such irritating and rude gossip that showed no consideration for others, she couldn't help thinking of everything Asakura Miyuki had suffered. An unnamed anger would then flare up in her heart, making her meddle in matters that were none of her business.
She glanced at Raiden Mei. She was a girl whose mature beauty surpassed her age, but her bearing made her seem difficult to approach, as though she were a flower on an unreachable peak.
Her purple hair was tied up with a ribbon into a ponytail.
The black uniform of a second-year student at Senba Academy displayed a unique charm on her. She was tall among girls, standing around 167 centimeters, and her already excellent proportions made her legs look even longer.
She's very beautiful. That was the girl's first thought.
Raiden Mei left a deep impression on the girl through her appearance alone, but Kiana then turned and left.
As for the future, that could be discussed later.
For now, they were merely strangers meeting for the first time.
Unlike Kiana, whose first impression of Mei was simply formed by her appearance, Kiana had left a significant impression on Mei's heart.
The transfer student who had spoken up for her had left a deep impression on her. Kiana, was it? She had heard about Kiana too, but only through outside gossip, and Mei, who had suffered so much from gossip herself, clearly wouldn't use that as a reference.
Thus, Kiana left Mei with an entirely positive impression: cold on the outside but warm-hearted, full of spirit, brave, and possessed of a strong sense of justice.
Nicknames such as Changkong City's Villain Crusher, Senba Academy's School Boss, the Hoodlum Punisher, and the Fishing-Expedition Iron Fist—all of them thoroughly unladylike—were absent from Mei's impression of her.
Although most of those nicknames were true, and even remarkably apt.
Kiana had recently come to hate hoodlums and villains, and her appearance made it extremely convenient for her to deliberately seek such people out and cause trouble for them.
So all those strange nicknames had been earned one punch at a time.
It could be said that when she wasn't at school, aside from working part-time and playing games, she was beating people up.
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