Su Yu did not go to miHoYo Studio today.
The reason was simple.
Don't ask.
It definitely was not because he was afraid Elysia would corner him offline and delete him.
His car had pulled into the underground garage of Anti-Entropy Entertainment's headquarters at four in the morning. Badge swipe, gate, then straight down into the subterranean lab section without a single obstacle.
On his phone screen, the red dot of unread messages had climbed into four digits.
Over nine thousand Weibo DMs, eight thousand of which were inquiries after eighteen generations of his ancestors.
The pinned thread on the forum was titled: "miHoYo HQ Location Confirmed — Razor Blade Group Buy Thread."
Bilibili's meme-remix section had sprouted forty-seven videos using him as raw material overnight. The most-viewed one was called "Healthy, Sunny, Upbeat" — his smiling face from the livestream.
Back then, everyone had called him "Brother Su" and "God Su."
But now?
That smile had been rechristened "the Old Crook's Smile."
The corner of Su Yu's eye twitched. He flipped the phone over and slapped it face-down on the workstation.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The air in Anti-Entropy's underground laboratory carried a mixed reek of solder and machine oil, and the industrial lamps overhead washed everything a sickly white.
Tesla's workstation was permanently the messiest corner on the floor: components, blueprints, half-eaten sandwiches and drained energy drink cans piled into a small mountain.
Tesla herself was crouched in front of a waist-high instrument, driving in the last screw with a screwdriver.
"You're here?" She didn't look up.
"I'm here." Su Yu dragged over a swivel chair and dropped into it, letting out a long breath. "It's a lot safer down here than my office."
"What's wrong with your office?"
"Elysia nearly kicked the door off its hinges last night."
Tesla finished the screw, stood up, and brushed the metal filings off her hands.
"You had it coming."
She turned and gave the instrument's casing a hard pat. The cold metal surface threw back a halo of white light, and a handwritten label was stuck to one side, the scrawl on it about as legible as an EKG readout — [Honkai Energy Detector Mark VII, Final Version (Please Stop Exploding)].
"Take a look at this."
Tesla's eyes lit up with the particular glow only a research fanatic produces while unveiling her life's work.
"The Wide-Area Honkai Energy Detector. Officially complete." She rapped the casing with a bent knuckle, drawing a dull metallic thud. "We're moving to mass production next. Once deployment succeeds, any sign of a Spatial Rift forming anywhere within Arc City gets us a precise warning one hundred and twenty minutes in advance."
Su Yu straightened up in his chair. The blueprints had been realized faster than he'd expected — Anti-Entropy's scientists deserved their reputation.
Several rough weld scars were still plainly visible on the casing, and the corners even bore scorched black marks — medals of honor left behind by the six previous versions that had died gloriously in testing.
"Nice work."
"Spare me the empty flattery."
Tesla rolled her eyes, hauled an aluminum alloy case out from under the workstation and dropped it on the desk with a bang.
"Look at this."
She flipped the lid open.
A handgun lay nested in the foam padding.
Matte black all over, the barrel noticeably thickened.
The curve of the grip matched the shape of Su Yu's palm exactly, and a line of small characters had been laser-etched into the side of the frame — [Neutron Star / Prototype 001].
"Neutron Star." Tesla lifted the pistol out of the case, bounced it in her hand with practiced ease to test the weight, then reversed it and offered him the grip. "Custom-built for you."
Su Yu reached out and took it.
It was considerably lighter than he'd expected.
But he caught it at once: under the lamplight, the metal grain along the inner barrel wall carried a blue-grey sheen — the color unique to Pseudo-Soulsteel.
"The principle's simple." Tesla dragged a crumpled sketch out of the trash heap on the desk.
"Your Star of Eden can manipulate gravity fields. So inside the chamber of this gun, I cut out the conventional firing mechanism and built in a set of micro gravity rails."
"Once a round is chambered, you use the gravity field directly to compress and accelerate the projectile to the physical limit."
She jabbed the tip of her red-and-blue pencil hard against a parabolic arrow on the sketch.
"For comparison, the muzzle velocity of an ordinary handgun round is roughly three to four hundred meters per second. But if you use gravity for launch acceleration, the exit velocity of this projectile can, in theory, clear two thousand meters per second without breaking a sweat."
Su Yu's thumb traced the frame. "Kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity."
"Correct. So you didn't quite flunk physics." The corner of Tesla's mouth curved up proudly. "A thirty-gram custom projectile of ultra-high-density tungsten alloy, fired at two thousand meters per second under your Star of Eden's Gravity Control. The kinetic energy it carries comes to one hundred and thirty-five thousand joules!"
"Here's a reference point you can actually picture — the military's top-of-the-line heavy anti-materiel rifle tops out at about thirty-six thousand joules of muzzle energy."
She tipped her chin up and pointed toward the underground firing range at the far end of the lab, her eyes burning with mad-scientist fervor.
"What you're holding isn't a handgun at all. It's a miniaturized, man-portable electromagnetic railgun."
"Want to test it?"
At the far end of the range stood a composite armor plate, the kind used specifically for mech testing.
High-strength titanium alloy outer layer, aerospace ceramic middle layer, Kevlar ballistic backing. Total thickness: twelve centimeters.
Tesla had maliciously planted a bright yellow warning sign beside it that read: [Anti-Entropy's Highest Active-Service Protection Standard].
Su Yu stood on the firing line and raised the weapon.
Right hand on the grip, left hand bracing the underside of the frame.
The Star of Eden's gravity field seeped from his palm into the barrel. He could feel the round in the chamber being wrapped, compressed, accelerated by an invisible force —
He squeezed the trigger.
There was no gunshot in the conventional sense.
Or rather, the sound arrived too fast, too violently.
So fast that the human eardrum registered only a single horrific crack, like heavy canvas being ripped apart in an instant.
A shrill hiss tore through the air.
On that distant composite plate, the one billed as the highest protection standard, a hole had appeared out of nowhere. Calling it a bullet hole was absurd.
It was a cavity the size of a grown man's fist.
The edges were as smooth and clean as if cut by a high-output industrial laser, punched clean through all twelve centimeters of composite structure in an eyeblink.
The projectile, its kinetic energy finally spent, buried itself in the meter-thick load-bearing concrete wall at the very back of the range — a wall reinforced with Pseudo-Soulsteel — and blew a web of cracks across the surface more than a meter across.
Tesla whistled.
Su Yu looked down at the gun in his hand.
The barrel was smoking.
He relaxed his grip. The front third of the barrel had visibly deformed, and the Pseudo-Soulsteel plating on the inner wall had crazed over with cracks, like a dried-out riverbed.
"…It's scrap." Su Yu set the now single-use "Neutron Star" back down on the desk.
"I know." Tesla walked over, picked up the ruined barrel and studied it for two seconds, then slammed it down on the desk in irritation.
The muffled bang knocked the leftover sandwich beside it onto the floor.
"The material's still not good enough!"
She raked a hand through her hair, mussing the red mane into something resembling a bird's nest.
"Pseudo-Soulsteel's strength, generously measured, is half that of genuine soul-steel. I scanned Rita's Skadi Ondurgud scythe on the sly. The crystal structure of real soul-steel falls completely outside the framework of every material science humanity currently has!"
"The composition and the molecular arrangement inside it are things nobody has ever seen, and there's no way on earth I can replicate that miraculous forging process!"
Tesla turned and leaned against the edge of the lab bench, deflated, arms folded across her chest.
"Put simply: I can build you a gun, but Anti-Entropy as it stands can't build a barrel that survives your full output. Every shot you fire costs you a barrel."
Su Yu looked at the scrapped Neutron Star on the desk.
"Can they be mass-produced? I'm only asking about the barrels."
"You think they grow on trees? Pseudo-Soulsteel output is already appallingly low. If I shut down my other projects, I can make you three a month at most." Tesla held up three fingers, her tone sour. "And quality control on each one is wildly unstable. Some get lucky and survive two shots, others blow the chamber on the first round if you push a little too hard."
"That's enough. We'll leave it there for now." Su Yu stripped the ruined barrel off the frame with practiced hands and tossed it into the scrap bin. "Three barrels, three rounds. I'll treat them as my trump card for when my life's on the line."
Tesla glanced at him and didn't argue.
"Breakthroughs in materials science were never an overnight thing." Her voice went a little indistinct. "Unless… you can pick me up some esper genius off the street who can manipulate metal lattices at the atomic level."
Su Yu said nothing. He simply filed that sentence away in his mind.
Ten in the morning. Anti-Entropy, sublevel three, the round-table conference room.
The room had no windows. Four walls of soundproofed grey concrete, and in the center a long oval table with holographic projection modules set into its surface.
The lighting was kept dim, only the spotlights above the tabletop burning, carving every face into sharp relief.
Su Yu sat at the head.
Down his left side sat Welt, Einstein, Tesla.
On his right, Eden, Kevin, Siegfried. Rita stood against the wall behind Su Yu, hands folded in front of her.
Kiana wasn't present today, because somebody had to hold down the fort at the studio — otherwise there would be nobody on earth capable of stopping an enraged Miss Pink Elf.
The holographic projector at the end of the table hummed to life, and Bronie's semi-transparent image rose out of the pillar of light.
Grey twintails, orange goggles, bubble gum in her mouth.
"Sorry, I'm late." Her hologram tilted its head. "The net cafe lost its connection. I had to fix the router first."
"Let's begin." Su Yu tapped the table.
Rita stepped forward from the wall, and the projection switched to a data table.
"Starfire Furnace, week three progress report."
"Initial complement of five hundred. As of yesterday, two hundred and fifty-one remain in training. Attrition rate: forty-nine point eight percent."
Rita swept a finger across the holographic panel, and two photographs floated up.
On the left, a young blonde girl, her expression a little tense.
On the right, a girl with short pink hair — a full head shorter, but in sheer presence she gave ground to no one.
"Priority subject: Susannah Manatt. Honkai energy resistance rating S, the highest natural aptitude among all current trainees. In theory, she has the potential to become one of the first Valkyries."
Rita's finger moved to the photo on the right.
"Sin Mal. Honkai energy resistance rating B, a marginal pass. But she ranks first in physical fitness testing, first in willpower assessment, and third in close-quarters combat. In plain language: she has dragged herself this far on nothing but sheer stubbornness."
Su Yu studied the two photographs.
"And the problem?"
Rita gave a soft sigh.
It was an elegant sigh, the kind reserved for a wine tasting where the vintage fell half a point short.
"In last week's tactical coordination evaluation, these two placed… dead last."
The room went quiet for two seconds.
Siegfried spoke up first. "Dead last? The kid who's number one in physical fitness came in dead last?"
Rita gave him a cool glance.
"Sin Mal's fatal flaw is that she cannot coordinate with any partner whatsoever. Her combat instincts are purely those of a lone wolf."
"The moment she enters a firefight, she blocks out every tactical order and acts on animal instinct alone. On a battlefield, someone like that either becomes a hero or gets the entire squad killed."
"And Susannah Manatt's problem is precisely the opposite." Rita called up Susannah Manatt's performance curves. "She's excessively dependent on orders from above and lacks independent judgment. If communications are jammed or her commanding officer falls, she suffers total decision paralysis. Fatally so."
Rita dismissed the photographs.
"Tomorrow is the Starfire Furnace's final evaluation. If their scores are still at the bottom, then under the ruthless elimination rules you yourself laid down, I will have to strike them from the roster. Even if one has S-rank resistance and the other is first in physical fitness."
Su Yu leaned back and tapped the tabletop twice with his fingers.
"Tomorrow's evaluation. I'll go to the base and see it myself."
Rita inclined her head slightly, accepting the order.
"After the evaluation concludes," her gaze swept every person at the table, "I will disclose the truth about the Honkai to every soldier who passes."
The air in the room sank for a moment.
"They are about to face the Abyss directly. They have the right to know exactly what they are fighting for," Rita said. "And they must understand, with total clarity, what the price of humanity's defeat will be if they flinch."
Su Yu nodded.
"Speaking of going to the base…"
He rubbed his brow with a wry smile, trying to lighten the weight in the room.
"As the nominal supreme commander, every time I go inspect the base I manage to accomplish approximately nothing, while a certain chief instructor who would prefer not to be named chases me around the entire camp on a daily basis."
"That so-called 'three a.m. no-restrictions surprise assassination drill' last time — I barely got my pants on before I had to crawl out through the ventilation duct in the bathroom."
Rita's expression did not shift a millimeter.
"That is because your neural Reaction Speed still falls short of tactical standards."
"It was the middle of the night! I was on the toilet!"
"Honkai Beasts will not queue up and wait for you to finish using the toilet before attacking, Lord Su Yu."
Siegfried snorted out a laugh.
The corner of Kevin's mouth twitched, then flattened again.
Bronie's hologram rolled its eyes, and her bubble gum popped.
Su Yu decided to abandon this topic before he humiliated himself further.
"The Wotan Project." He turned to Einstein on his left. "How far along are we?"
Einstein pushed up her glasses.
Her expression was permanently set to "I am contemplating a problem ten thousand times more complex than everything the rest of you combined could handle," but what came out of her mouth was brief.
"The energy core is installed. The Hephaestus Forge's output is holding steady at ninety-seven percent of design value. What remains is final calibration of the exoskeleton and integration testing of the weapons systems."
"When can we light it up?"
"Next week at the earliest."
Su Yu ran the timeline through his head.
"Schedule Wotan's first activation test for the day the Starfire Furnace graduates."
Einstein raised an eyebrow. "The same day?"
"Yes."
Su Yu laced his fingers and propped his chin on them.
"Rita's job is to tear open the world's scar for them, tell them what the Honkai is, let them look straight down into that bottomless despair."
"And then… our job is to haul Wotan up out of the earth. To let them see with their own eyes exactly what kind of ingenuity and hope humanity can unleash in order to go on living."
Welt sat quietly back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach, and offered not one word of comment from start to finish.
But when Su Yu said that, the gaze behind his lenses lingered on that young face for two long seconds.
"Speaking of despair."
Siegfried barged into the conversation without ceremony.
His chair was tipped back on its two rear legs, his own legs sprawled under the conference table with zero regard for appearances.
The posture belonged to a drunk who had just clocked off work and collapsed onto his own living room couch to watch a match.
"Hey, Su Yu, what exactly did you do these past two days to make heaven and man alike hate your guts? I had nothing to do last night so I scrolled my phone, and — hoo boy — the entire internet is posting bounty notices on you!"
Su Yu's fingers skipped a beat on the tabletop.
"…Standard operating procedure. A story update for the game, that's all. The players' immersion runs a little strong, so their reaction was… slightly more intense than I anticipated."
"Slightly?" Siegfried looked at him the way one looks at an alien.
He dug his phone out of his jeans pocket, swiped it a couple of times at random, and read aloud at full volume.
"'Su Yu, you heartless mutt of a game designer! Give Teacher Himeko back to me! I'm crowdfunding a dump truck to flatten your entire family!' — that's what you call slightly?"
At the far end of the long table, Bronie's hologram let out a merciless snicker.
"You said it. Boss was so scared today he didn't dare walk through the Company's front door. Came running down to Anti-Entropy's basement at the crack of dawn to play turtle-in-a-shell."
Su Yu shot her a frosty glare.
Hack Bunny shrugged, entirely unbothered.
Eden sat in the first seat on Su Yu's right.
She had barely spoken since the meeting began, one hand propping up her chin, the fingertips of the other tracing silent circles on the tabletop.
At Bronie's jab, her gaze lifted from the table and settled on the side of Su Yu's face.
It was a very light look.
So light it was like a feather touching down on water. Most of the oblivious men in the room noticed nothing at all.
But Bronie, whose instincts were razor-sharp, caught with perfect clarity the danger signal buried inside it — "after school today, you're dead."
Bronie silently burned a stick of incense for her boss.
"All right, all right, everybody dial it back."
At the critical moment it was Kevin who spoke, forcibly extracting Su Yu from the situation.
"We can talk about the game later. I need to report progress on my end too."
"Since the overpass incident, the first-stage Genetic Lock in my body has essentially stabilized. But my technique for channeling that power in actual combat is still far too crude. At present I'm receiving—"
He paused, and glanced sidelong at the white-haired man beside him.
"…my father's special training."
"That's right!" Siegfried slapped a palm down on Kevin's shoulder hard enough to rock his body forward.
"My son's talent is beyond question. He just lacks live combat experience. Give me some time and I guarantee I'll turn him into the strongest fighter the Kaslana family has ever produced!"
The more Siegfried talked the more worked up he got, and down came another heavy slap.
"And then! The two of us go into battle together! Father and son in arms! We'll beat every last one of those damned Honkai monsters back to where they crawled out of!"
Kevin's shoulder sank under the impact.
He didn't dodge, and he didn't hit back. The line of his mouth just loosened, very slightly.
The oppressive weight that had settled over the room lifted, miraculously, thanks to this pair of idiot father and son.
Su Yu swept his eyes around the table.
Welt was thinking. Einstein was taking notes. Tesla was gnawing on a sandwich. Siegfried was rubbing Kevin's head. Eden was still watching him with that dangerous look. Rita stood by the wall like a statue, and Bronie's hologram was still blowing bubbles.
"Business is done. Anyone have anything to add?" Su Yu asked.
The bubble in Bronie's mouth popped on cue.
"Boss."
"Hm?"
"I've got a personal matter after the meeting. I'd like to talk to you alone."
Her tone wasn't quite the usual one.
The slacker swagger had drained out of it, replaced by something he couldn't put a name to.
Su Yu looked at her.
"Fine. Meeting adjourned."
The others filed out one after another.
Siegfried headed for the door with an arm slung around Kevin's shoulders, muttering about "three extra sets of grappling drills this afternoon."
Kevin's face stayed calm, but his stride quickened by half a beat, as though trying to slip out from under the hand on his shoulder.
Welt and Einstein walked side by side down the corridor, discussing Wotan's weapon system parameters in low voices.
Tesla stuffed the unfinished sandwich into the pocket of her lab coat and sketched a new barrel design on her tablet as she walked.
Rita left last. Passing Su Yu, she stopped for a moment.
"Lord Su Yu, don't forget to come to special training tonight either."
"I know."
Rita left.
Only Su Yu remained in the conference room, along with Bronie's hologram at the end of the table.
Su Yu leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Kiana.
[Yangtze, Yangtze, this is Yellow River. Reporting, Commander! Elysia has been successfully pacified by yours truly using three boxes of limited-edition macarons plus one hour of dedicated chitchat! She has now returned to the Golden Courtyard to sleep. The studio's Level One Red Alert is lifted. You may commence wriggling back — over.]
Su Yu stared at that extremely eye-catching word "wriggling" on the screen for a while, then shoved the phone back into his pocket with resignation.
"Bronie."
"Here."
"Whatever this personal matter is, tell me on the way. The alert's been lifted. I need to go back to the Company."
"Sure."
Su Yu stood, picked up his car keys and the aluminum case holding the Neutron Star's spare barrels, walked out of the conference room, down the corridor, and rode the elevator to the parking garage.
He reached his black car and put a hand on the door.
His earpiece crackled.
"Boss."
Bronie's voice.
Su Yu's brow furrowed slightly.
Every trace of the casual banter she'd thrown around in the conference room was gone.
"What is it?"
Su Yu didn't open the door.
On the other end of the line came a rare pause, a full two seconds long.
Two seconds later.
Hack Bunny's voice came through, slow and quiet: "Our studio… does it still have an opening for a mercenary with a heavy sniper rifle?"
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