The bright moonlight swallowed the sunset. This ark, laden with the hope of humanity, floated quietly over the eastern waters of the Mu Continent. Lin stood before a completely transparent "wall," looking at the vast sea of clouds in the dark night.
The sensation of a breeze blowing across skin was felt indoors, but it was merely a Human-Made illusion that only made one feel gusts of cold air.
Lin had found this quiet spot. Sakura had almost never proactively sent him a communication, so he was quite surprised.
"Is something wrong?"
"Your surroundings are very quiet. Are you somewhere without people?"
Lin looked at the deserted, open area nearby and whispered, "One moment." He then strode into the interior of the base. He jogged down the corridors to Mobius lab, then walked straight into her private office under the unfazed gazes of three assistants.
"Hey! You—" Mobius was currently changing her clothes. Seeing Lin burst in so urgently, she didn't even have time to put on her coat. She could only throw a lab coat over herself, clutching it to cover her private parts as she hid behind the desk, gritting her teeth.
Lin locked the office door and spoke to Sakura on the other end: "Wait a second, my signal is poor. I'm moving to another spot to call you back."
He abruptly cut the call, scanned the desk, and finally fixed his gaze on Mobius small figure.
"What are you doing! Has a sex demon possessed you? Get out! You pedophile!" Mobius clutched her collar, her teeth clenched. She tried to use her snake-like eyes to act fierce and scare Lin off, but she didn't realize that her flushed face only made her look more delicious and cute.
Lin walked over silently. After a loud shriek, he held Mobius communicator, which he had taken from her lab coat, and walked to a corner of the room to call Sakura.
"Alright, you can talk now."
"What happened on your end?" Sakura seemed to have caught the faint sound of a young girl's cursing.
"Nothing."
Lin knew from Sakura first sentence that nine times out of ten, whatever she had to say couldn't be heard by others—especially certain people in Fire Moth. Most areas and communications at headquarters were monitored, so Lin figured Mobius room and her communicator's frequency wouldn't be under surveillance.
"Go ahead. No one can hear us now."
Sakura wasn't stupid. She had intended to tell Lin the information from Gray Serpent indirectly. Since they weren't being monitored, she could say it outright.
Sakura hopped onto an old tree. She wasn't at the 10th Branch, but in a remote residential area.
"Lin, I don't know if this information is true. The source is Gray Serpent. He encountered the Honkai in Svatok 51 and appeared after we finished clearing the Honkai Beasts, wanting to pass some information to you." Sakura calmly scanned the passing pedestrians. No one noticed a person merged with the shadows of the tree, but she wouldn't relax; Fire Moth wouldn't have only one " Chrysalis."
"..." Lin held his breath. His mind recalled Gray Serpent in that dark room, red eyes flashing, telling him the theory of organization and belief.
"The Honkai in Svatok 51 was not natural. it was artificially manufactured within Fire Moth."
...
"The new special type of Honkai Beasts are temporarily named Quantum Honkai Beasts. Their species and numbers are unknown, but the Sea of Quanta is a dimension that cannot be measured by any unit. So, assume there are countless types of Quantum Honkai Beasts, though even so, compared to the Sea of Quanta itself, it is just a drop of water in the ocean."
Mei pushed a component into a slot, watching the surrounding circuits light up. She wrote something on her electronic pad.
"Quantum Honkai Beasts have a superposition state and a collapsed state. They usually move in a superposition, but in some cases, they enter a collapsed state. In the collapsed state, they lose their usual outer protection, and some may even lose their special powers."
"To make a Quantum Honkai Beast enter the collapsed state, the power of the Second Herrscher is required. Remember the Time Fracture system? Increasing its output by 7.35 times can destroy the superposition state of surrounding Quantum Honkai Beasts. However, only MANTIS can withstand that output."
Vil-V nodded with a smile. From a distance, she looked like Mei's assistant listening to her say things that were completely incomprehensible, but Mei knew Vil-V would understand exactly what she meant. Moreover, she had explained it using easy-to-understand terms.
"Can I take a Time Fracture device back and try to improve it?" Vil-V asked with a smile.
"Of course." Mei pushed up her glasses with her wrist, a movement that added a touch of intellect to her appearance. Her calm gaze shifted toward Vil-V behind her lenses. "However, you don't seem to have a history of improving others' work. Why do you want to try this time?"
Vil-V was very confident in her own creations, and she rarely improved someone else's work just to use it as her own. Simply put, she insisted on "originality."
"Love can change a person, can't it? Aren't you the same?"
"Logically speaking, there is no difference between me now and before I fell in love."
"Speaking of which, since Quantum Honkai Beasts aren't products of our world, how did they appear in Svatok 51?"
Mei didn't press Vil-V on her change of subject regarding the Time Fracture device. She had always turned a blind eye to Vil-V various behaviors. For instance, before taking over the Divine Key project, Vil-V would intentionally sabotage the Engineering Department to scam funds—either by blowing up the ceiling or drilling a hole in the floor. Once, she even blasted a hole straight through several walls; the high-levels who were in a meeting turned green when they saw the hole in the conference room wall.
Mei looked down at her electronic pad: "Atra is a region with instability in spatial dimensions. The Stargate was built on this basis. So, this tide of Quantum Honkai Beasts might be a gap in the barrier between the intrinsic world and the Sea of Quanta, caused by spatial instability in the Sea of Quanta."
"So the problem lies within the Sea of Quanta?"
"According to logic, yes."
Mei rested her finger on the bridge of her glasses, meeting Vil-V gaze.
Vil-V smiled brightly: "That's wonderful. Then isn't it an extremely low-probability event? It seems a similar incident will never happen again."
"According to logic, yes."
Vil-V picked up the Time Fracture device beside her, weighed it in her hand, then waved to Mei: "Then I'll head back and research it. See you, Mei."
Mei didn't respond. Looking down at the formulas written on her pad, she whispered in a voice only she could hear:
"According to logic, huh..."