Honkai: Dual Passage, Taking Xi Lian to Honkai Impact 3rd

A crisp sound echoed in her ears, soft and dense.

They actually added cushions to their soles? Are these two suffering from eighth-grader syndrome?

She furrowed her brows.

Watching these two chuunibyou cross the small grove and walk through the crowd coming from the opposite direction—

Wait—!

Her eyes widened abruptly.

Her deep purple pupils stared in disbelief at the duo, whose bodies had already partially phased through several students.

Is it... a magic trick?

Or a projector?

"Hey, how dare you still show your face in front of me? Are you looking for a beating?"

"You lowly b*tch, Raiden Mei."

The clear sound of the insult reached her ears.

The focus in Raiden Mei's eyes sharpened. The student she had identified as a projector was now standing three steps away, chin held high in his usual arrogant manner.

—It was real.

Everything from the tone and attitude to the arc of the paper ball they had thrown—

She caught it in her hand instinctively.

She turned her palm over and looked at the paper ball in her hand.

—It was real, too.

Unable to comprehend such an unrealistic phenomenon, the fallen young lady immediately stepped forward to follow them.

The other party wasn't walking fast—at least, the boy wasn't. In an instant, she stood before the two, blocking their path.

"What... do you mean by this?"

As expected, a bit of simple projection and memory-matter was enough to pique anyone's curiosity.

"We are simply showing you the truth of the world."

He spread his hands openly, showing no sign of displeasure at being stopped.

"You should be able to feel that you are different from the people around you. Everyone looks human. It looks like an ordinary, mundane world, but in reality, there are many alternative existences hidden beneath the surface."

"..."

Anyone hearing this kind of talk would likely think the person in front of them was suffering from eighth-grader syndrome.

But at this moment, Raiden Mei bit her lip.

Yes.

She could not deny this.

Her father's status, so high that even the Prime Minister had to bow and scrape; his control over the entire city as if he were a feudal lord; the wealth that seemed endless; and—

The technology that would inadvertently reveal a corner of itself, clearly far beyond this era.

And the swordsmanship passed down through the family for generations.

Raiden Mei still remembered the iron pillar she had sliced through the day she received her certificate of mastery.

Solid steel, one hundred percent purity; even those Olympic champions on television couldn't do such a thing.

She was young then and had been obsessed with manga for a time, thinking she had inherited some special bloodline or that something evil was sealed within her body—which was why she possessed this power beyond humanity. Later, under her father's strict supervision, she discarded those notions and focused on studying to become a young lady worthy of the Raiden Family.

However—

Everything that happened afterward...

"So," her voice trembled slightly, "was Father... locked up because of things in the hidden world?"

Jiang Cheng clearly saw those pupils brighten suddenly, as if they had absorbed the lightning from the high heavens.

"No."

He said calmly.

"He really did commit financial fraud."

"Crackle----!!!"

Lightning flickered and roared.

It was abstract material energy manifesting in physical form, overflowing from the girl's body as electric light.

To be cast into the abyss after being filled with expectation.

Even a body that had become nearly numb felt this stimulation once more.

—Despair.

And unlike others who could only rage helplessly, despair found an outlet within this girl in the form of thunder, and accompanying this energy, just as abruptly, appeared—

--Honkai energy erosion.

Purple veins sprouted and spread wildly like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, originating from the tip of his little finger.

In an instant, more than half of his left palm was swallowed.

It was still climbing.

Wrist. Forearm. It was about to reach the elbow.

Even though the pain lasted only a fleeting moment—the nerves were cauterized the instant they touched the Honkai energy—the successive, relentless waves of pain signals formed an almost endless sea.

"--!"

His heart hammered against his ribcage like thunder, each beat so heavy it felt as if it would shatter his bones, leaving his eardrums ringing.

For a split second, Jiang Cheng even felt a sense of relief.

He was relieved that he had just let go of the girl's hand.

Otherwise, this level of pain would have driven him to grab onto anything within reach, regardless of who it was or whether they could withstand it.

He gritted his teeth, barely managing to endure until the moment his nerves were completely cauterized, and then, his left hand lost all sensation.

Inexplicably.

A glazed luster rippled at the edge of his vision.

"Intolerable!"

5. Your father is indeed guilty of financial fraud.

It was not a prayer meant to conceal traces.

It was something else—a sharp, piercing weapon whose outline flickered in the haze, something he could sense instinctively.

Jiang Cheng noticed that Xilian, who had been standing quietly by his side, had stepped forward at some point, the shadow cast by her bangs obscuring every expression on her face.

--As calm as the surface of the sea.

--Unease.

He could feel from the bottom of his heart that something was wrong with Xilian, but Jiang Cheng could not quite see what it was.

"So... you intend to hurt me as well?"

Raiden Mei's voice was dark and sharp, like a parasite clinging to bone; it sounded like someone dragging fingernails across a glass pane, a screeching noise that sent chills down one's spine.

--Accompanied by the appearance of lightning.

"Ah... I knew it... how could..."

"How could anyone be any different..."

Before Jiang Cheng could add anything, the girl's eyes had already been stained red.

The deep purple pupils, which had once shone like lightning in a clear sky, were now infused with a genuine, blood-red hue, as if she were a predatory beast.

"--But financial fraud? That doesn't matter at all!"

His voice cut through the lingering lightning. "If anything, for a tycoon of your father's caliber, the money he embezzled doesn't even qualify as a character flaw."

The lightning ceased as if clouds had dispersed.

Raiden Mei stood frozen in place, like a robot whose power had been cut, staring at him with a vacant gaze.

--What... did he say?

"Your moral standards are far too high. The true elite of this world... they skin people alive and eat children."

His voice lost its previous steadiness.

The aftermath of the pain still rippled through his nerve endings, like foam left on the beach after the tide recedes, gnawing at his consciousness bit by bit.

This made his words fragmented, yet each syllable carried an unquestionable, persuasive weight.

"Opening a small hatch on a private island that leads directly to the sea, killing people like shrimp, throwing their heads into the ocean, and eating their bodies."

"Or reenacting the myth of the Virgin Mary's descent—gang-raping a young girl, torturing her to death, and if the child doesn't fear Jesus, dressing up as Jesus to kill her."

"Playing with young boys and girls before eating them... Red Shoes, referring to a group of people hunting fleeing girls with knives, killing them, and peeling off their skin... to make red shoes..."

"Starving children to death... because it makes the meat more tender... Christmas trees... little lambs... claypot rice, husband-and-wife lung slices."

The girl's eyelashes trembled.

"I could list over a hundred such incidents. That is what those high-level elites truly play with."

Confirming that the pervasive Honkai energy had subsided, Jiang Cheng stopped the topic he had deliberately brought up to seize her attention.

"Including your father. He committed financial fraud in a formal sense, but the reason he ended up in prison has nothing to do with that fraud. Even if he embezzled ten or a hundred times more funds, it wouldn't have affected him in the slightest."

"The core issue—"

"Is that his opponent in the underworld, a woman named Cocolia, wanted to seize ME Corp, that massive cash cow."

Jiang Cheng finished his long explanation in one breath, but Raiden Mei's attention was no longer on her father's affairs.

"Those things you mentioned... the games played by the elite?"

"Ah Cheng, are these things... true?"

Even Xilian widened her eyes. Her fingertips, still retaining a glazed, iridescent luster, twisted uneasily against her chest.

"They do exist, and not in the ancient past, but in the modern day—at this very moment. However, these matters do not concern us, and your father, Raiden Ryoma, has never done such things."

Jiang Cheng shifted the topic without a moment's hesitation.

"The point now is—"

"You."

Raiden Mei obediently raised a finger to point at herself, her slender neck instinctively tilting backward.

"Me?"

"Yes."

Jiang Cheng nodded his head without hesitation, confirming it.

"Within Raiden Mei lies infinite opportunity, power strong enough to overturn current society and delve deep into the underworld, but this power comes with danger."

"Just like those novels and comics you used to read—there are many people now, belonging to different factions, who have set their sights on you because of this power. The vast majority of them harbor ill intentions."

"And the one closest to you, the one most capable of controlling you, and the very source of the bullying you are currently experiencing—"

"Is Cocolia, the one who sent your father, Raiden Ryoma, to prison and seized ME Corp."

In reality, the topic had not been diverted at all; she was still fixated on those monstrous acts from before.