The player's perspective shifted back to Wise and Belle, and the hacker intrusion storyline began.
On the livestream:
Xia Linxi couldn't resist speeding through the story:
"Ahhh, miHoYo, don't keep me in suspense! You showed me such a handsome guy, and then you just switched perspectives?"
In the comments:
[Honestly, the protagonists' battle of wits with the hacker was really well done. Wise and Belle were so calm! They completely ran circles around the hacker.]
[Don't you think the male protagonist's cold expression is kind of cute? And he seems a little obsessed with his sister, too!]
Working seamlessly together, Wise and Belle used the Phaethon account as bait and finally drove off the hacker lurking in the shadows for good.
"Oh, brother, looks like it was my brilliant mind that did it! I took that hacker down just like that!"
Wise sighed as he watched his sister hurry to claim credit. "Yes, yes, Belle, you're the smartest."
The two stabilized the connection again and logged into the Eous terminal. The image instantly cleared.
But the moment the view came back, the sight before Belle made her freeze, and intense terror rose in her heart.
Belle: ∑(❍ฺд❍ฺlll)
The ground in the Crete Hollow was a mess. Countless shattered, shriveled Ethereal limbs were scattered everywhere, a horrifying sight.
"Holy exploding beans! What expert did this?"
Belle murmured to herself. An attack of this magnitude was completely beyond her understanding.
These gruesome traces of bodies bursting apart and disintegrating could never have been caused by ordinary fighting. Only a terrifying, overwhelmingly powerful force could have wiped out an entire area of Ethereals in an instant.
"Holy crap, even 300 Nicoles couldn't pull off an attack like this, right?"
Belle knew perfectly well that Nicole and her two companions were just ordinary Hollow raiders in New Eridu. Their strength was limited; there was no way they could possess such world-destroying combat power.
Overwhelmed by unease, she immediately broke free of her tension and hurried toward Nicole in the image, her voice full of panic:
"Nicole! What happened?! Did an extremely high-level abnormal Ethereal show up there? Are any of you hurt?"
Nicole looked at the Eous, which had finally returned to normal, and breathed a small sigh of relief. She looked up at the anxious Belle and took the opportunity to ask:
"The connection kept dropping and lagging just now. What happened on your end? Why were you suddenly out of contact for so long?"
Belle suppressed her fear and quickly told her everything about the crisis they had just faced:
"A top hacker just launched a malicious attack on the Eous terminal. They wanted to tamper with our Hollow survey data and pinpoint our location.
Wise and I took a risk and used the Proxy account as bait to trace them back to their source. It took a lot of effort to drive them off for good and stabilize the connection."
As soon as she finished, she put aside her other thoughts. Her tone grew especially serious, and she refused to let Nicole change the subject:
"Forget about what happened on our end! Tell me what's really going on in the Hollow right now!
A power that can wipe out an entire area of Ethereals in an instant is too strange. It's definitely beyond anything you can handle. It's extremely dangerous there, and we have to relocate and evacuate immediately!"
Seeing Belle's grave expression, Nicole pondered briefly, then deliberately lowered her voice, sounding solemn and mysterious:
"Belle, have you ever heard of the First-Generation Void Hunter, the Dragon Emperor?"
Hearing the name, Belle was briefly taken aback. Then she couldn't help letting out a soft laugh, and her eyes instantly lit up with reverence:
"How could I not have? He's acknowledged throughout New Eridu and the entire history of the Hollows as the strongest human ever!"
Her voice was sincere, full of genuine admiration:
"Lord Dragon Emperor was gentle and compassionate, and he hated evil with a passion. He spent his life protecting everyone in New Eridu. He's been the idol I admire and worship most ever since I was little."
Belle was filled with emotion. The catastrophe of the Old Capital's fall had swept across the world, and her teacher had been falsely accused by the higher-ups of causing it.
Countless people had joined in the slander, but Lord Dragon Emperor alone had stepped forward and publicly refuted the accusations despite the weight of public opinion against him.
That had also brought Belle some comfort. After all, someone else believed in her teacher, just as she did.
After briefly calming herself, she suddenly came to her senses and pressed Nicole, full of confusion:
"But Lord Dragon Emperor clearly fell in the Hollow disaster a year ago. The whole city mourned him; everyone knows about it... What do you mean, bringing him up so suddenly?"
Anby, who had been standing silently nearby, raised a hand and pointed behind the Eous's camera, her face expressionless. Her cool voice sounded slowly:
"Don't wonder about it. Turn around and see for yourself."
Belle's heart jolted. Full of questions and unease, she spun around to look.
The next second, she froze completely, the blood in her body almost stopping.
"Holy crap... Is this real?"
Belle murmured in a daze.
Amid the devastation of the Hollow ruins, the black-haired young man sat quietly, his eyes tightly shut.
His clothes were torn and tattered, but there wasn't a single wound on his body. Only his clothes bore the traces left by his tragic fall back then.
His slightly disheveled black hair hung down over half his smooth forehead, lending him an air of broken, gloomy languor.
Yet, despite his disheveled state, his face was still breathtakingly handsome, so stunning it was enough to take one's breath away.
The shock instantly overwhelmed Belle. Her legs gave out, and she fell straight from her operator's chair to the floor. Ignoring the pain, she hurriedly looked up and called out:
"Brother! Come here, quick! Look! Is that... Is that my idol, Lord Dragon Emperor?!"
At her call, Wise rushed to the terminal screen. His gaze locked onto the black-haired figure in the image, his pupils shrinking sharply, his face full of disbelief.
Not daring to waste a moment, he immediately activated the terminal's highest authorization and called on the Hollow Deep Dive System to scan and compare the person's information from every angle.
Data streamed past at high speed as the system checked and compared it repeatedly.
A few seconds later, a glaring line of green text appeared in the center of the screen:
[Identity match: 75%. Target highly likely to be: First-Generation Void Hunter, the Dragon Emperor.]
On the livestream:
Xia Linxi looked at her computer and declared confidently to the stream:
"The First-Generation Void Hunter, and that domineering name! Just one look at my husband and you can tell he's an exceptionally powerful expert!
Believe it or not, I bet anyone with 'Void Hunter' in their title will definitely be a wheelchair character in the gacha pool, and an especially strong one at that."
Lin Xingyao's eyes were practically turning into hearts:
"Husband! Definitely husband material! Don't you think this picture is absolutely divine?
My husband is sitting quietly on the ruins, and the way the light falls on him is just gorgeous, okay?
I swear, the moment he's released, I'm pulling until I get him, okay? I don't care whether he's strong or not!"
In the comments:
[666, the meta player has been converted into a waifu-over-meta player.]
[You don't care whether he's strong? One look at the codename 'Void Hunter' and I can tell he's going to be ridiculously strong!]
[Please. What if I never cared about any of your power levels?]
Lu Yingheng sat quietly on the ruins and used his mental power to ask the system, Human-Machine System, is the story sequence over?
The little system girl appeared on his shoulder. "It's over, Host. Congratulations, you really put on a big show this time!"
'Ding! Congratulations, you have gained 150 million Emotion Points.'
Lu Yingheng stood up from the ruins and spoke to the system in his mind. Why so few this time?
The little system girl rolled her eyes cutely:
"Most of the Emotion Points this time came from your codename. It's so domineering. Otherwise, even a hundred million would have been generous."