The morning light over Arc City tore through the heavy gray clouds, slipping through the gap in Carole's not-quite-closed curtains and landing on her desk.
That beam of light illuminated five empty energy drink cans sprawled haphazardly across the desktop, the potato chip crumbs scattered in the gaps between keyboard keys, and Carole's own bloodshot eyes.
Her ten fingers were still hammering away at the keyboard.
The clatter of mechanical switches colliding filled the cramped bedroom like a dense, unrelenting downpour.
A full night.
From the very second Rin had ended her stream last night, Carole had rallied every member of her guild, launching an offensive across every major gaming forum, every discussion board, every beta-test chat group she could find.
She'd tried to build a wall of words to hold the line.
But the battle was a rout.
The story of "the server's first five-star legendary weapon, Sakura Blossom, falling into a newbie's hands" had long since escaped the realm of game discussion and mutated into an internet carnival that no longer needed logic to sustain itself.
Nobody cared about the truth.
The mob's frenzy had become a wheel, crushing facts beneath it as it rolled straight into the gutter.
User [ArcCity KnowItAll]: "A level-1 newbie with a five-star legendary weapon? She can't even read a Zombie's attack wind-up. Claiming she made no deal with that Jiahao guy — who believes that? Does capital-fueled idol-making not even pretend to follow basic logic anymore?"
User [Keyboard Pianist]: "These female players these days play it slick — all pure and pitiful on the surface, who knows what shady deals they're cutting behind the scenes!"
Complaints like these were the mild ones.
Carole gritted her teeth, fingers still slamming counterattacks onto the keys.
[You maggots hiding behind your screens! Keyboard warriors! You have no proof — what gives you the right to slander her!]
The instant Carole hit send—
Dozens of replies packed with mocking emoji flooded in like a tide, drowning her pale defense in an ocean of data.
"Oh look, a crystal-fan's come to defend her master."
"How much did your master pay you to whitewash this? There's money enough for everyone, come join in!"
Cloaked in the name of justice, they ran wild with cyberbullying.
That was the true face of a keyboard warrior.
Carole switched out of the forum tab and opened WeChat.
In the chat window sat forty-five unread messages she'd sent Rin between one in the morning and seven.
A screen full of green bubbles on her side, dead silence on the other.
Carole slammed her phone down on the desk.
She shot to her feet, shoving the chair back, its legs screeching across the floor.
She grabbed the jacket hanging by her bed, pulled it on, and yanked a set of motorcycle keys from a drawer.
She wasn't waiting any longer — she was going straight to Rin's place right now.
Buzz—
The phone on the desk vibrated.
Carole lunged and snatched it up.
A new message popped up on the screen.
Rin: [Carole, sorry to worry you all. I'm fine.]
Carole's fingers jabbed at the screen with enough force to nearly crack the glass.
[Where were you last night?! Do you have any idea what those people online want to do to you?! Whatever you do, don't look at the forums!]
The chat window went quiet for two seconds.
"Typing..." appeared above.
Then a pixelated smiley emoji popped up.
Rin: [I just went to take care of some preparations.]
Before Carole could type her next word.
A golden-bordered banner notification popped up without warning at the top of her screen, seizing her attention.
[The streamer you're specially following, "Fried Tofu Puff," has just gone live!]
The leather jacket slid off Carole's shoulders and fell to the floor.
She tapped the link, the stream loaded, and she flooded into the live room.
The picture lit up.
The backdrop was a public plaza in the heart of Arc City.
The morning wind swept a few fallen leaves across the ground.
In the distance, skyscrapers cast long shadows in the dawn light.
Rin stood alone in the open space at the center of the plaza.
Her signature long pink hair was tied up today in a high, brisk ponytail with a black hair tie.
She wore a light pink-and-white tracksuit, the pant legs cinched tight.
In her hands she gripped the hilt of her manifested holographic tachi — the Sakura Blossom.
The pink blade shimmered with flowing data-patterns in the morning light, its tip dipping toward the textured concrete below.
The moment the stream went live, every hater, every gossip-hound, every night-owl who'd been reveling in the drama all night came smelling blood, and they crashed straight through the server's streaming threshold.
The viewer count in the top right corner jumped from zero straight to thirty thousand, then broke a hundred thousand, then a million.
The danmaku field was instantly buried under a dense wall of white text, scrolling so fast no single line could be read.
But the hostility radiating off the screen was palpable even through the glass.
[Oh, the stall owner's gone live? Where's Jiahao? Not with you today?]
[Holding a treasure that isn't even yours — hands not shaking? Hurry up and hand the gear over, don't embarrass Arc City's players!]
[The way she's holding that sword is like gripping a fire poker, I'm dying, does she even know which side the edge is on?]
Rin stood right at the eye of the storm.
Facing the screen full of abuse, she didn't look at the camera.
She simply closed her eyes, quietly.
Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, breath even.
Inhale. Exhale.
She was waiting.
"ROAAAR—!"
A roar that tore through the speaker membrane thundered across the entire plaza.
Ten meters behind Rin, red data-streams gathered in a frenzy, swirling like a miniature tornado.
The virtual concrete ground cracked inch by inch, rubble floating in midair.
A massive Honkai Beast, built like a heavy armored vehicle, shattered the vortex of data and spawned into the plaza.
Thick white armor plating encased its body, purple energy patterns glowing at its joints.
Its two thick forelimbs slammed into the ground, gouging out two deep craters.
[Elite: Chariot-class Honkai Beast]!
Above the monster's head, two rows of blood-red text appeared.
One was a long health bar.
The other was its level marker: Lv. 21!
Carole's eyes locked onto the top right corner of the screen.
Beside Rin's avatar in the live room hung a pitiful number: Lv. 11!
A full ten-level gap.
That meant an absolute chasm in stat totals.
The danmaku field went dead silent for half a second.
Then it erupted completely.
Carole spammed the private message channel in a panic, her fingers trembling.
[Rin! Are you insane?! That's Chariot-class! Even top guilds' main squads need five tanks pulling aggro just to grind that thing down, and you're going in solo at level 11?!]
[Run! This game has a death penalty! Die once and you lose the gold and exp on you! Weren't you trying to earn money to buy Sakura a gift? Don't do something stupid!]
The tide of the danmaku shifted — from pure abuse to the mockery of watching a clown act.
[It's over, this girl's been driven insane by the cyberbullying, she's come to throw her life away and burn her durability.]
[Overconfident newbie, everyone get your screenshots ready, watch her get slapped into paste in a second.]
[This is Chariot-class we're talking about — one slap and her gear and health bar both zero out instantly.]
Facing the giant beast behind her, Rin slowly opened her eyes.
She still didn't look at the camera, nor did she turn to look at the roaring Chariot-class Honkai Beast.
Her gaze crossed the plaza, landing on an open-air café at its edge.
There, a large parasol stood open.
In the shade beneath it sat a white plastic chair.
Sitting there was Jiahao, dressed in a black hoodie, wearing a smiley-face mask.
His legs were crossed, his body leaning back against the chair, hands tucked into his hoodie pockets.
He simply sat there in silence, his gaze crossing the plaza to watch the pink figure at its center.
Rin pulled her eyes back.
She filled her lungs with air, then slowly let it out.
She tightened her grip on Sakura Blossom's hilt, the sword wedged into the crook of her thumb.
Amid a screen full of question marks and mockery, she planted her heel and pushed off.
Her sole tapped against the concrete with a light click.
She stepped into the Chariot-class Honkai Beast's aggro range.
"ROAR!"
The Honkai Beast's compound eyes locked onto its target.
It let out a furious howl, raising its massive forelimb like a hydraulic press coming down — that claw carrying enough force to crush anything, tearing through the air, sweeping toward her.
The gale kicked up dust from the ground, rushing at the virtual camera.
The feedback of the wind pressure carried through the data stream, and quite a few viewers reflexively squeezed their eyes shut.
Rin stood still.
Knees unbent, feet unmoving.
Not a single motion.
The danmaku flooded in: [She's frozen in fear! She doesn't even know how to dodge!]
The giant claw closed in.
One meter.
Half a meter.
A foot.
The fierce wind cut across her face.
Just as that claw — more than enough to one-shot her — was about to brush her nose in that split second of do-or-die.
Rin's ankle turned, just slightly.
Her thigh muscles fired, driving through her waist.
Her body slid to the side and back in a tiny arc that defied physical intuition.
The claw grazed past the tip of her nose.
The wind it kicked up tousled her bangs, strands of pink hair dancing in the air.
The claw's tip sliced the air with a piercing shriek that stung the ears.
[System Judgment: Mikiri Counter — success!]
[Passive Triggered: Invincibility Frames!]
The holographic smoke cleared.
The haters, braced for a bloodbath, froze.
People holding water cups halfway to their mouths stopped mid-motion.
Rin still stood in the same spot.
She held the exact same stance as before, not even the angle of her grip on the sword had changed.
It was as if that world-ending blow had struck nothing but empty air.
She was completely unscathed.
The danmaku field glitched with garbled code for a moment, then the haters scrambled to save face:
[Dumb luck! Definitely a bug in the system's model collision detection!]
[Coincidence! Look, she didn't even dare draw her sword, obviously her hand cramped up from fear and she couldn't move!]
[Nothing to brag about — you can dodge once, but can you dodge forever? The next hit's a guaranteed kill!]
After the first strike missed.
The Chariot-class Honkai Beast's system aggro maxed out completely.
It reared its head back, and its massive body leaped ten meters straight into the air.
Sunlight vanished, blocked out.
A massive shadow fell over Rin at the center of the plaza.
Its signature instant-kill move — [Mount Tai Press]!
This attack combined the monster's full mass with the system's gravitational acceleration, covering a thirty-meter radius around it.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
In front of her screen, Carole clapped a hand over her mouth in despair.
Just as every viewer had concluded Rin was doomed, fingers already poised to type "GAME OVER"—
Rin moved.
She still hadn't drawn that glowing blade.
Her left hand gripped the middle of the pink sheath, her right hand held the hilt.
Her legs bent slightly, her center of gravity dropping.
Facing that descending mountain of flesh, she thrust the sheath upward!
CLANG——!!!
A sound of metal striking metal, crystal-clear beyond anything natural, pierced through the stream's microphone, transforming into a high-frequency soundwave that made every viewer wearing headphones rip them off.
This wasn't the sound of cold steel meeting cold steel.
It was the dedicated sound effect of the System's deepest layer of judgment — [Perfect Deflect]!
Under the forced override of the underlying code, the laws of physics were overturned.
The unstoppable Chariot-class Honkai Beast, carrying an attack of overwhelming force, slammed instead into what felt like an invisible Wall of Sighs.
Its massive body froze mid-air.
The reaction force erupted.
The Honkai Beast let out a pained cry and toppled backward, crashing down onto the plaza floor.
The ground shook, grid-patterned cracks spreading outward.
The white armor on its chest shattered, exposing a core weak point glowing with harsh red light.
[System Judgment: Stance Broken — Discern!]
Rin, who had kept her center of gravity low and held back since the fight began, finally moved in that instant.
Her right thumb pressed against the sword guard.
She pushed it upward.
Click.
The blade slid half an inch out of its sheath.
[Weapon Ultimate: Cherry Blossom: Scatter]!
The pink holographic effect surged like reversed lightning, splitting the void.
This strike was sharp, decisive.
No hesitation, not a trace of sloppiness.
A perfect arc of pink light sliced through the air and cut straight into the glowing red weak point at the core.
CRACK——!!!
The sound of the System's underlying code shattering rang out.
The Chariot-class Honkai Beast — which had held a ten-level advantage over Rin, boasted millions of health points, and made countless veteran beta players tremble — froze mid-fall.
The long health bar over its head was wiped away as if erased by a giant eraser.
In an instant. Emptied.
One strike.
One-shot kill!!
The Honkai Beast's massive body disintegrated in the pink flash of the blade, scattering into countless fragments of data.
Splash——!
Golden rain fell.
A massive haul of virtual gold, columns of light marking rare material drops, burst across the plaza in a blaze of gold.
The moment the Honkai Beast fell, the entire live room — more than a million viewers watching — went blank.
The danmaku field, as if someone had pulled the plug, went into fifteen seconds of absolute stillness.
Not a single character scrolled, not a single emoji flew by, as if the server itself had crashed in that instant.
Everyone.
Keyboard warriors, haters, rubberneckers, and Carole with her heart in her throat — all of them.
They stared, unblinking, at the screen.
On screen.
The pink-haired girl stood bathed in a rain of gold coins.
Her body still held the afterimage of the sword strike's finish.
The blade's edge angled toward the ground.
Shing!
Rin gave her wrist a light twist, tracing out a crisp flourish with the blade.
The holographic Sakura Blossom dissolved into a stream of data and reformed into its cylindrical holographic hilt, clipping back onto her belt.
She turned around, walked across the ground littered with coins, and stepped up to the camera, her expression calm.
No arrogant laughter of victory, no mocking counterattack against the trolls.
She bent at the waist and bowed deeply to the camera.
"Thank you all for taking the time to watch me."
The girl straightened up.
She raised her head.
Those clear eyes seemed to pierce straight through the network, cutting into every single person behind their screens.
"Going forward, my goal is to place first in the Ordinal Scale beta. I'll keep working hard. Thank you."
The moment she finished speaking.
No further words.
The stream cut off, clean and abrupt.
The screen went pure black.
But the viewer count in the top right corner kept climbing frantically.
After a brief moment of dead silence, the emotions pent up to the breaking point in the live room erupted like a volcano.
On the pitch-black screen, a tidal wave of text exploded, hot enough to burn down a server room.
[??????????????????]
Every shock, every stinging humiliation, every shattered worldview — all of it, in that instant, condensed into a screen full of question marks!!
Not far away, beneath the parasol, the corner of Su Yu's mouth curled up. He lowered his voice and spoke to someone behind him in a casual tone.
"There, now you can relax, right?"
In the shadow behind him, Sakura slowly opened her eyes. She looked at Rin with a complicated expression — there was heartache in it, guilt, but also unmistakable pride.
"Thank you."
She said her thanks to Su Yu.
"I owe you one. That plan you mentioned before — I'll think about it."
With that, she stepped backward, and before long, vanished into the shadows.
Su Yu let out a long breath and got to his feet, stretching his body a little.
On his retina, the bright red countdown kept ticking down.
Whether it was [Honkai Eruption Countdown], or [Destined Death].
Su Yu pulled his gaze away from the crimson numbers and looked toward the pink-haired girl trotting over to him, waving.
Sunlight fell across her still-youthful face, a glow rippling over it, and for a moment it looked as if she'd been gilded in gold.
It seemed the hope left for this world had grown by one more measure.
Today, Arc City's weather would clear from overcast to sunny — a beautiful, clear day.
____
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