Meanwhile, within the Royal Palace of this city, a figure strolled leisurely through the halls, as if taking a casual walk. Of course, anyone who saw his blood-soaked clothes, tattered garments, and utterly bewildered expression would hardly mistake it for a leisurely stroll.
"D-demons!!!" The last living man in the grand hall screamed hysterically, collapsing to the floor and scrambling backward. A closer inspection would reveal a dark stain spreading across his trousers, unmistakably wet with fear.
As he crawled, his hand brushed against a blood-smeared pistol. Without hesitation, he snatched it up and squeezed the trigger.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
With each gunshot, crimson blossoms erupted on the headless body's torso. Yet the bullets did little more than mark its flesh; the headless figure continued its relentless advance. It knelt beside the pile of corpses and began flipping them over.
"Finally found you. So you flew all the way here, huh?" A voice echoed from beneath the pile—a severed head, lying among the dead.
The headless body picked up its severed head and placed it back on its neck. In less than a second, the head and neck fused back together, the connection so seamless it looked as if they had never been separated.
This man was Xing, the enforcer of the Fuguang Society. He had arrived on Nawajima the day of the conference and, unsurprisingly, had been swept into the Dimensional Rift.
During his time in the Capital, Xing had witnessed the entire riot firsthand. His assessment of the situation was simple:
Reasonable and normal!
In Xing's eyes, the people of Sakura Nation were nothing more than beasts wearing human skin. No depravity they committed would surprise him.
He hadn't been idle during this time, constantly searching for ways to torment Sakura Nation. Now, his search had brought him here.
"I don't know what that Sakura Nation Director was doing here, but with this many guards, it must be something important," Xing muttered to himself. Just then, footsteps echoed through the hall as more Sakura Nation personnel rushed into the Royal Palace's grand hall, drawn by the commotion.
The reinforcements consisted of local Nawajima police officers, unaffiliated Evolvers, and primarily, members of the Self-Defense Forces stationed there—the so-called "military."
"Quick... kill him!" The survivor who had wet his pants in terror pointed at Xing as his teammates arrived. Others might struggle to comprehend his fear, but moments ago, he had witnessed this man walk straight through the entrance, enduring a hail of gunfire, ignoring their attacks, and wading through a storm of bullets to slaughter everyone in his path.
Xing's shattered body regenerated instantly. His severed arm regrew in the blink of an eye—faster than slipping an arm through a short sleeve. Most absurdly, even having his head blown off couldn't kill him!
This was Xing's Ability: Super-Speed Regeneration!
Xing surveyed the enemies who had surrounded him, maintaining his calm demeanor. "Is this all the reinforcements?" he asked.
The enemy didn't answer. The terrified survivor persisted, "His Ability is self-healing, but it must have a limit! If we kill him enough times, completely obliterate him, we might be able to finish him off!"
"Sigh..." Seeing the situation, Xing sighed helplessly. If he took on these enemies one by one, turning the battle into a drawn-out war of attrition, he was confident he could win. But that would take far too long—perhaps an hour or two to finish.
"So, it's best to end this quickly." As he spoke, he pulled a cylindrical silver canister from his pocket and pressed the button on top.
Pfft! Instantly, a dark emerald gas erupted from the canister, spreading at lightning speed to engulf the entire hall.
"What is this? A smoke grenade?! He's trying to escape!"
"Quick, stop him before he... cough cough... cough!"
A cacophony of hacking coughs erupted, each sound like someone trying to expel their lungs. The coughing was loud and relentless.
Standing calmly amidst the fog, Xing remarked, "This is merely a belated return gift. A repayment, decades overdue, for your past use of such weapons."
However, no one in the hall could hear his words now. The Sakura Nation personnel's skin had turned deathly pale, their bloodshot eyes bulging grotesquely. They had become twisted, inhuman figures, neither man nor ghost, their faces contorted into ghastly caricatures.
Watching the scene unfold, Xing couldn't help but marvel, "Xiao is truly remarkable. He actually managed to break one of the ironclad rules of Dimensional Rifts!"
As everyone knew, the Fancheng Virus was like a trial specifically designed for Fancheng. It only affected the city's inhabitants, leaving everyone else immune.
Other Dimensional Rifts also possessed similar regional limitations. A Rift localized to a particular area would only impact the people within that region.
Yet Xiao, through his research, had eliminated the Fancheng Virus's restriction to Fancheng People, transforming it into a bioweapon usable against anyone.
Of course, to prevent a biohazard disaster like those in the movies, Xiao had also implemented safeguards. The virus could only survive in the air for five minutes, and zombies created through infection couldn't spread it further through bites or scratches.
And, most importantly...
Xing gazed at the enemies before him, all now zombies without exception. With a hint of regret in his voice, he said, "What a pity. I genuinely wanted to help you all. You were ordinary people, right? It would have been wonderful if you could have seized this opportunity to become Evolvers."
"Ah, my apologies. I forgot that the price for this virus's universal infectivity is its inability to turn people into Evolvers."
In other words, no one could become an Evolver through this modified version of the Fancheng Virus. The virus Xing held was now purely a weapon.
However, research on the virus continued. Now that a "weaponized version" existed, perhaps the dream of creating a side-effect-free "miracle drug version" that could grant everyone the power to evolve was no longer just a distant fantasy.
In truth, when Xiao released the virus in Longcheng, infecting countless Fancheng People, it was both an experiment and a data-gathering exercise. It was precisely through this vast collection of data that the weaponized virus had come to be.
Technological progress inevitably marches hand-in-hand with bloodshed and suffering.
The field of medicine serves as the most glaring example. Its current sophistication was built upon the immeasurable bones and corpses of those who came before.
Behind every solution to a seemingly incurable disease, countless lives are inevitably lost.
Of course, this isn't to say that Xiao was a good person. In fact, he himself didn't believe he was. He was acutely aware that his actions were wrong, driven by his impatience. If he had slowed down his experiments, he likely could have achieved the same results in seven or eight years, without sacrificing so many Fancheng People.
But therein lay the problem: Xiao was too old. He had too little time left.
Returning to the present, Xing strolled through the toxic mist, weaving through the surrounding zombie horde unharmed. As an Evolver from Fancheng—and a rather special one at that—his body contained an exceptionally high concentration of the Fancheng Virus, far exceeding that of ordinary people. Perhaps to these zombies, Xing appeared more like one of their leaders, explaining their lack of aggression.
After navigating a maze of corridors, Xing finally arrived at a partially open door. Stepping inside, he found a dazzlingly complex magic circle radiating an intense light, its intricate patterns pulsating with energy.
"So, those soldiers were guarding this thing?" Xing muttered to himself, casually pulling out several grenades he had pilfered from an unknown corpse earlier. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed them into the center of the magic circle.
-
The perspective shifted to Firefly. Just as Fujiwara was reeling from the Skeleton King's severed arm, she moved again, her speed surpassing the limits of his dynamic vision. She vanished from his sight entirely.
"Firefly Type-IV - Priming Strike!"
A cyan sword flash sliced through the air. Firefly effortlessly severed the skeleton's remaining arm, followed by its head, and finally its torso.
It appeared as if she were methodically dismembering the monster piece by piece, but in reality, she was simultaneously dismantling the will of the Sakura Nation's Director.
"Clarity Spell! Clarity Spell! Clarity Spell!"
Fujiwara frantically activated the magic embedded in his ring. As its name suggested, the Clarity Spell was designed to dispel illusions. But no matter how many times he cast it, nothing happened.
After all, he wasn't under any illusion.
"Why... why isn't this an illusion...?"
Boom—!!!
The skeleton finally crumbled under Firefly's relentless assault, shattering into pieces that rained down with a deafening crash. Fujiwara tumbled to the ground as well, but he had no time to register the searing pain. His expression twisted into a hysterical grimace. "We were so close to succeeding! Why now of all times?!"
Fujiwara then produced a thick stack of parchment from his robes—a magic scroll containing an Ultra Ring Magic of his own creation. Without hesitation, he tore the scroll to shreds, activating the spell inscribed within.
"Heavenfall!"
In an instant, immense magical power converged and surged skyward, forming a colossal magic circle over ten kilometers in diameter in the air!
Firefly wasn't a mage and lacked the precise perception of magical power. However, any mage present would have clearly sensed the world's entire reservoir of magic being drained dry. The once-a-century Magic Power Tide had been completely depleted by this single spell!
Then, an asteroid nearly the same size as the magic circle slowly emerged from its center, its surface riddled with crimson fissures and glowing with molten lava.
Clearly, the recent setback had driven Fujiwara into madness. He had recklessly unleashed the most destructive spell from his entire collection of wizard scrolls.
It was almost inconceivable that a wizard could effortlessly wield such power using only their own magic, without any external assistance.
A meteorite just one kilometer in diameter, falling from the sky, would possess enough destructive force to instantly obliterate an entire city, far exceeding the power of nuclear weapons.
As for a ten-kilometer meteorite, Earth's history offers a stark example: the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. A meteorite of similar size struck our planet, and even without considering the long-term consequences, the immediate impact would be enough to instantly erase half a country. The remaining territory would soon succumb to the meteorite's aftershocks, albeit with a slight delay.
At this very moment, everyone in the Capital could see the massive sphere of molten rock looming in the sky. Though chaos reigned in the city, not all its inhabitants had perished; countless survivors remained, their faces etched with utter despair.
Fujiwara had clearly thrown his hands up, aiming to take everyone down with him in a desperate gamble.
Yet, as Firefly gazed at the meteorite hurtling through the sky, she felt no fear. Instead, she was filled with a strange sense of anticipation, a desire to test her limits.
In the game Honkai: Star Rail, Firefly had once achieved the legendary feat of "exploding a planet." Could she replicate such a feat here? And this wasn't even about destroying a planet—her target was "merely" a meteorite ten kilometers in diameter.
This wasn't a question of "could she," but rather, if she didn't act, the Capital below, and perhaps the entire nation, would be obliterated by the impact, claiming millions of lives.
As these thoughts raced through her mind, Firefly had already begun to move. She soared toward the celestial menace, strategizing how to handle this crisis. Surely she couldn't simply slice through a ten-kilometer-wide rock with her sword like peeling an apple, could she?
In the blink of an eye, Firefly stood directly before the meteorite. An indescribable sense of oppressive weight washed over her. From her vantage point, she couldn't even see the edges of the colossal rock. It truly felt as if the sky itself was collapsing upon her.
Cautiously, Firefly plunged her two Lightsabers into the meteorite. She channeled all the energy from her mech into the blades, unleashing it in a concentrated burst from their edges.
In truth, Firefly possessed no refined techniques. All she could do was pour in enough energy and brute-force the solution.
Too close to see the full effect herself, Firefly was unaware of what Fujiwara observed from below. The massive meteorite was visibly cracking and disintegrating mid-air!
Cyan light erupted from countless fissures across the rock's surface, bathing the entire sky in an ethereal cyan glow.
P.S.: The Fancheng Virus is essentially just a variant of the Zombie Virus. It's highly lethal to ordinary people, but Evolvers with naturally robust physiques are likely immune to infection.