The fluorescent lights in the training hall cast a harsh white glare across the floor.
A ring of uniformed officers stood around the perimeter, their eyes full of the kind of curiosity and anticipation people reserved for circus tightrope acts.
After all, in an age of peace, titles like "successor of the Taixu Sect" and "ancient martial arts master" sounded rarer than serial murder cases.
Wasn't this straight out of some pulp novel or wuxia story?
Following behind Kiana like an overprotective parent, Su Yu leaned in close and whispered urgently into her ear.
"Kiana, remember—hold back."
"This is a police station, not Anti-Entropy's mech warehouse."
"Don't throw one punch and bring the whole building down. If that happens, not even Dr. Mei will be able to save you."
"Yeah, yeah, I know already!"
Kiana waved him off impatiently, her little ahoge bobbing as the corners of her mouth curled upward with a trace of smug pride at being trusted.
"I'm not an idiot. Controlling my strength is basic training. Back at St. Freya—"
Realizing she'd almost let something slip, she hurriedly corrected herself and got back into character.
"Back in those deep mountains, I practiced that ten thousand times. Relax. I'll just use… mm, my usual mosquito-catching strength."
Su Yu's eyelid twitched.
Mosquito-catching strength?
If he remembered correctly, the last time there had been a mosquito in the apartment, she'd swatted it so hard the wall ended up with not just a mosquito smear, but a clear handprint dent and three spreading cracks.
That night, Su Yu had spent half an hour filling the damage with toothpaste.
But now the arrow was already on the string.
There was no turning back.
The first round was standard physical testing.
Height. Weight. Eyesight.
That part went smoothly enough, though it still made the young officer taking notes click his tongue in astonishment.
"Vision… 5.3 in the left eye, 5.3 in the right? That's practically fighter pilot level. Miss, do you never use a phone? Ah, right, of course—you grew up in the deep mountains."
"Body fat percentage… this low? Is it all muscle? But the lines don't look like it…"
Standing in front of the height measure, Kiana straightened her back, her long legs pressed neatly together, her gaze drifting slightly.
For a Valkyrie, this kind of static data was child's play.
A body tempered by Honkai energy and forged in piles of dead enemies had muscle fibers several times denser than those of ordinary people. Perfect physical function was simply the foundation of survival.
People were surprised, sure—but they only took it as proof that a "martial artist" truly deserved the title.
Then came the real event.
Grip strength testing.
Mei stood beside the testing station with what looked like a particularly sturdy electronic grip dynamometer in her hands.
"This is the latest police-use grip meter. It has a very high measurement ceiling—more than enough for professional strongman data."
"Miss Kiana, please grip it as hard as you can. We need to assess your maximum instantaneous explosive force."
Su Yu, standing to the side, was sweating bullets. He frantically shot Kiana warning looks.
Don't believe her! Absolutely do not use your full strength! If you go all out, that thing is becoming scrap metal! We're trying to get a special approval here—not a charge for destruction of public property!
Kiana caught the signal from Su Yu's face, which looked like it was about to cramp itself into paralysis.
She blinked in understanding and made an "OK" sign.
Got it. Hold back. This lady has that much common sense.
She walked forward and extended a slender, pale hand that looked delicate enough to snap under pressure, then lightly picked up the heavy device.
The officers around them all held their breath, craning their necks to see what kind of jaw-dropping number this "heroine" would produce.
A hundred kilograms? More?
Kiana took a slow breath and adjusted her breathing—a Kaslana-style gun-fu starting pattern.
Her gaze sharpened instantly, and her fingers tightened just a little.
Inside, she reminded herself: lighter… lighter… like pinching… pinching a rice ball?
"Ha!"
She gave a light shout and closed her fingers in what looked like a casual squeeze.
There were no bulging veins, no flushed face, no dramatic flexing of muscle. Even the lines in her arm barely tensed.
Everything happened in an instant.
Crack—!
A crisp, sharp metallic snapping sound echoed through the silent training hall.
Everyone's expressions froze.
The digital display that had been showing numbers instantly blacked out. A second later, a faint ribbon of smoke began to curl upward.
More terrifying still, the two metal grip handles that had originally been parallel were now bent into a grotesque angle.
The spring in the middle shot out like a snapped kite string, bounced happily twice on the ground, rolled to Mei's feet—
—and stopped.
Silence.
Utter, deathly silence.
No one even seemed to breathe.
Kiana stared at the twisted lump of what no longer resembled a piece of equipment, blinked, then looked toward Su Yu, who had gone completely stiff.
Wearing the most innocent expression imaginable, she carefully set the mangled chunk of "scrap" back on the table.
"Um…"
She scratched the back of her head, her voice tiny, guilt written all over her face.
"This grip meter… was the quality maybe not that good? Could it have been defective? I… I really only squeezed it a little. Just a little."
The gathered officers all sucked in a breath.
A little?
You call that a little?!
That thing was made of special steel! Even pliers wouldn't do that!
Su Yu covered his face in agony. He could already see his future collapsing.
Fantastic. At this rate, the "ancient martial artist" persona was about to veer straight into "Super Saiyan" or "alien lifeform" territory.
How was he supposed to explain this afterward? Qigong? Internal force unleashed?
Only Mei remained as calm as ever.
She bent down, picked up the spring that had shot out, and weighed it in her hand.
"Interesting."
She quickly wrote a line onto her clipboard.
"It seems our measurement ceiling was too conservative after all. Grip strength… off the scale."
Then she looked up at the mortified Su Yu and Kiana, her tone tinged with approval.
"It's fine. Equipment damage will be recorded as public-use loss. On the contrary, this proves that Miss Kiana truly is the kind of person we need—someone with special talent. She fits the standard for a security consultant extremely well."
Only then did the officers around them seem to recover. The way they looked at Kiana shifted from curiosity to awe; some even took half a step back without realizing it.
If this girl slapped someone, their skull would probably shatter. Who would dare provoke her?
With that thought, more than a few officers began looking at Su Yu differently as well.
If the "junior sister" was already this terrifying, then this seemingly mild, scholarly man—could he also be one of those hidden monsters?
As expected of the talent personally recognized by Dr. Mei. The standards here really were something else.
"Ahem."
Su Yu had no choice but to step in and smooth things over. He gave Kiana's shoulder a light pat and forced out a laugh.
"That, ah… is merely the entry-level version of one of our Taixu Sect's secret arts: Heaven-Cleaving Inch Force. It emphasizes explosive power in an instant."
"Internal force. It's all internal force. Sorry for the laugh, everyone."
The tragedy of the grip test was still fresh in everyone's mind, the twisted dynamometer already carefully sealed away by staff in an evidence bag.
The next event was reaction-speed testing.
Several pieces of highly sophisticated-looking pitching equipment were wheeled into place. After some angle adjustments, their black launch ports pointed squarely at the center of the floor.
Originally, they were used to train special police to evade non-lethal projectiles in complex environments. At maximum speed, they could launch balls at 120 kilometers per hour.
Su Yu looked at those machines and felt his scalp prickle.
With "rice-ball pinching" strength like that… if Kiana instinctively tried to catch or block the projectiles…
Those baseballs would probably be reduced to baseball powder, or bounce back and obliterate the launch machines.
Taking advantage of the final moments before the test began, Su Yu sidled up to Kiana like a thief and whispered in a rush.
"Hey… Heroine, how about we try a different strategy for this round?"
"Absolutely do not hit anything! Those balls are very fragile—they cannot withstand your Inch Force."
"Let's just dodge, okay? Dodge only, don't catch. Show them your… uh, lightness skill? Movement technique? Just don't touch the balls!"
Kiana looked at Su Yu's expression—pure please don't destroy the station—and burst into laughter.
After that grip-meter incident, most of her nervousness had actually vanished.
Apparently, the equipment in this world really was just… flimsy.
"Relax, I'm not some violent maniac."
She gave him a playful wink, those mismatched eyes sparkling with mischief.
"You said dodge only, right? That's my specialty. Back when I was training in the mount— ahem, in the sect, I was famous for never getting caught. Even… even Master couldn't catch me."
Granted, those escape skills had actually been honed mostly through skipping class.
Su Yu let out a breath and retreated to the side.
Hopefully, things would stay under control this time.
"Test begins. Phase One: single launcher, medium speed."
Mei's voice came through the speakers, cool and emotionless like a judge's.
The machine gave off a faint hum, and a yellow baseball shot out, whistling straight toward Kiana's face.
For an ordinary person, it was already fast enough to require total focus just to barely dodge.
But in Kiana's eyes…
That ball was moving in slow motion.
She didn't even make a dramatic move. She simply tilted her head slightly.
The ball sliced past her hair, not even disturbing that signature little ahoge.
"Increase speed. Two launchers. High speed."
Clearly not intending to let her pass so easily, Mei gave the order without hesitation.
The two machines started up at once, their humming turning sharp.
Baseballs flew like a barrage from two tricky angles, sealing off Kiana's movement space.
At that density, even a specially trained officer would have had to throw themselves around in an ugly panic just to avoid getting hit.
But Kiana in the center of the room…
She changed.
The vaguely lazy posture she'd been holding vanished in an instant, replaced by a state of complete relaxation and absolute alertness.
She moved.
Not the chaotic dodging of someone avoiding danger, but a rhythm almost like dancing.
Her left foot tapped lightly. Her body bent backward as though boneless, and two balls skimmed just above the tip of her nose.
Then she pivoted on the ball of her foot, spinning in place like a top, and three more missed her entirely.
No wasted motion.
Every dodge happened at the precise millisecond before impact.
Every movement stayed within the smallest possible range, with not a fraction of stamina wasted.
Even under a hailstorm of baseballs, not one touched the edge of her clothing.
The officers watching gradually opened their mouths wider and wider, their eyes round as saucers.
"Is… is this The Matrix? Bullet time?"
"She's really human? Those movements… it's like she's predicting the trajectory."
"This is the legendary… Ripple-Treading Step? Qinggong really exists?!"
At the edge of the room, Su Yu watched the white-haired girl stroll through the barrage as casually as if she were taking a walk under spring rain.
He had only two words in his mind:
So elegant.
That was instinct tempered on the edge of death, over and over again.
Even without the power of Time Fracture, the combat awareness engraved into her bones still let her stand above everyone else in a world of ordinary humans.
"Full power. Randomized firing pattern."
A glint flashed across Mei's glasses as her fingers flew over the control panel.
All four launchers activated at once.
For one terrible second, the entire training hall seemed to erupt into a storm. The sharp tearing sound of projectiles split the air in a continuous stream.
Su Yu's heart jumped into his throat.
This was nightmare difficulty!
And yet—
Kiana smiled.
That long-lost thrill, that exhilaration of dancing across a battlefield, lit a sharp light in her mismatched eyes.
Her silhouette blurred.
She was simply moving too fast.
She slipped through the "rain."
Twisting, sidestepping, flipping, spinning.
Every motion flowed into the next. It was so beautiful it resembled a carefully choreographed solo performance.
Then, in the instant two balls were about to strike her square in the chest, she made a move that stopped everyone's breathing—
She didn't dodge.
Instead, she raised both hands softly, drew a circle in front of her chest, and at the exact moment the balls touched, redirected them with an impossibly gentle motion, sending them off to either side.
It was a Valkyrie deflection-field technique.
But to the outside world…
"Tai Chi—Cloud Hands?!"
An older officer blurted it out without thinking.
The two baseballs, originally flying at high speed, obediently changed course as though they were well-behaved children, brushing harmlessly past her ribs without touching her at all.
When the final ball hit the ground, the machines gave a soft click and shut down.
Yellow baseballs littered the entire floor.
And standing in the center, Kiana's breathing wasn't even uneven.
She lightly dusted herself off, smoothed back a stray strand of hair, then turned to look at the already dumbstruck Su Yu—
—and flashed him a huge victory sign.
Applause.
Nobody knew who started it, but the entire hall erupted into thunderous applause.
This wasn't the polite clapping people gave out of courtesy. This was heartfelt admiration for strength.
"Amazing! Absolutely amazing!"
"That footwork—no way anyone gets that without twenty years of hard training!"
"The Taixu Sect… truly terrifying! Who the hell dares say traditional martial arts are fake now?!"
"Holy crap—did humanity evolve in secret without telling me?! Everyone else trains martial arts and she's straight-up cultivating immortality!"
Su Yu wiped the sweat off his forehead. Internally he was screaming Cloud Hands my ass—that was clearly a Valkyrie armor deflection-field technique, but on the outside he maintained an inscrutable, lofty expression.
As though to say:
Yes. This is my junior sister.
What shocked him even more, though, was something else entirely.
Ever since injecting the enhancement serum, the change had been subtle—but now, for the first time, he could actually track Kiana's movements.
Sure, being able to see them clearly and being able to physically respond to them were two completely different things.
But it was enough to prove that while the system was a scammy, rebate-hungry piece of garbage most of the time, the things it gave him did work.
Even if the process was agony so intense it nearly killed him.
Kiana was officially only registered as a B-rank Valkyrie.
But then again, there was a saying, wasn't there? Even Konoha's strongest ninja started out as a Genin.
In terms of raw physical ability, calling her "outside the scale" wouldn't really be an exaggeration.
Of course, in overall combat strength, she probably wouldn't truly step into S-rank territory until she gained partial control of the Herrscher of the Void's powers and became the true Void Drifter.
Then again, the whole S-rank classification had always been a little absurd.
The S-rank Valkyrie standard in Schicksal was notoriously awkward—Bianka and Rita both got put into that same bracket, and anyone who knew, knew exactly how ridiculous that disparity was.
To put it bluntly, Durandal was only labeled S-rank because the system didn't have anything higher. If anything, she should've had a class all to herself.
Killing a Herrscher solo wasn't anything extraordinary for her. Otherwise, Otto never would've brought her in as insurance during Queen Descends.
Still, by the later stages, Valkyrie rankings stopped meaning much anyway.
Once things escalated far enough, everyone left standing basically had Herrscher-tier combat power. If you weren't at that level, you hardly qualified for the table at all—
Actually, that was a lie.
Even Herrschers didn't qualify anymore.
The ones who truly had a seat at the table also needed some ridiculous god-tier gimmick or some massive inherited power stacked on top of that.
The damned system, as always, never said anything clearly. It hadn't actually explained just what level of Valkyrie physicality his enhancement serum was supposed to match.
It really did feel like some asshole prankster who loved watching people panic.
If this weren't the Golden Courtyard, Su Yu would honestly suspect the system was some manifestation of Aha.
Still, it definitely wouldn't be below B-rank.
After all, B-rank was the minimum level at which a Valkyrie could actually be sent into combat. Anything below that was logistics and odd jobs.
He still had two enhancement shots left.
To be honest, after the 72-hour cooldown ended, Su Yu had wanted to immediately inject the second one.
But the system had warned him that the pain scaled upward in tiers, and strongly advised him to first get used to his newly enhanced body before proceeding to Phase Two.
For all its usual scumbag behavior, the system's teasing couldn't be trusted—but when it told him he might not survive something, that wasn't the moment to be stubborn.
His goal was to gain enough strength to be capable of holding on to Kiana's hand.
Not to have himself painfully tortured to death instead.
Because if that happened, he'd just end up with two dead bodies instead of one.
Once he finally dragged his spiraling thoughts back under control—
Su Yu walked to Kiana's side and cupped his hands toward the crowd, unable to resist indulging his own theatrical side.
"My apologies for the humble display, everyone."
"This is our school's qinggong. The core of it is…"
He glanced at Kiana, who still had that smugly composed expression on her face.
"…to pass through the leaves without a single one touching you."
Mei looked at the data on her screen:
Evasion rate: 100%. Reaction delay: 0.01 seconds.
Practically brushing against the human theoretical limit.
She adjusted her glasses and drew another bold circle around the words S-Class Special Talent.
Then she gave Su Yu a meaningful look.
"If Kevin were here, what do you think he'd say?"
Su Yu thought about it for a second, then answered seriously, "Two words."
"What two words?"
"Holy shit."
Mei nodded and tapped a few times on her phone.
Thirty seconds later, her screen lit up—
Kevin: Holy shit?!
Kevin: While other people train martial arts, your junior sister is cultivating immortality? Is she some kind of celestial?
....
Month-End Sale: Get 20% Off This Weekend
My Patreon : patreon/RuneA
If you want to read the novel in advance, you can subscribe for early access. I also have many more novels in my collection that you might be interested in
I upload ten novels a day, with 3 to 4 chapters per title depending on the length. If you're following a particular series, please wait your turn a little
If there's a particular novel you're enjoying on Patron, please give it a 'like' so I know to focus on it