Ma Feima moved.
No feints, no probing jabs. The wooden floor beneath this Humanoid Tyrannosaurus let out a groan under the strain, and he launched himself like a cannonball, trailing a pressure wave that could shatter an ordinary person's ribs, driving straight at Su Yu's face.
"HA——!"
The punch was overwhelming — brutal, direct, and devastatingly simple.
On the sidelines, Kiana reflexively crushed the bag of chips in her hand.
She knew exactly how much force was behind that fist. Any ordinary person without Valkyrie armor would be on their way to the ICU after taking a hit like that.
Su Yu didn't move.
His eyes were still unfocused, like he was still mulling over how the Red Braised Pork at lunch had been a little too salty.
Not until that enormous fist was a mere centimeter from the tip of his nose — close enough to make out every single hair on the knuckles — did he act.
He tilted his head.
Not the clean, dashing sidestep of a martial arts master. More like… how to put it?
Like a drunk man's foot slipping on a wet floor. Or someone catching their toe on a pebble mid-stride.
Su Yu's body collapsed to the lower left in a posture that was utterly bizarre, completely graceless, and frankly a little pathetic.
"WHOOSH——!"
Ma Feima's heavy fist grazed past Su Yu's ear, the displaced air slicing into his cheek like a blade.
Missed?
Ma Feima froze for a fraction of a second, his body still hurtling forward on momentum.
And in that same instant, Su Yu — who had looked for all the world like he was about to faceplant — suddenly had his bracing hand snap taut like a coiled spring. He shoved off the floor, slid through the gap under Ma Feima's armpit like a slippery eel, and was already on the other side.
He even casually patted Ma Feima on the small of the back as he passed.
Smack.
Low damage. Maximum humiliation.
"What… what kind of footwork was THAT?!"
Ma Feima spun around, his face the picture of a man who had just seen a ghost.
He had locked onto Su Yu's energy signature. He was certain of it. But in the moment he threw the punch, Su Yu had felt like… he'd suddenly dissolved into an insubstantial shadow.
Su Yu straightened up, dusted off his hands, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
Footwork? This was called "the knee-jerk reflex I drilled into myself after getting skewered by Sirin's Subspace Lance a thousand times in my dreams."
Compared to that lunatic woman who teleported at will and launched spears from every angle with zero blind spots, Ma Feima's straightforward haymaker looked, to Su Yu's eyes, like a tutorial video playing at half speed.
"Again." Su Yu crooked a finger.
This time, Cheng Lingshuang finally stirred.
The sleepiness in this prodigy's eyes evaporated entirely, replaced by the bright, hungry gleam of a hunter who had just spotted rare prey.
"Now this is interesting."
Cheng Lingshuang's silhouette flickered — and she was moving even faster than Ma Feima by a hair's breadth.
She didn't charge headlong like Ma Feima. She moved like a breath of wind, slipping silently into Su Yu's blind spot.
Two against one.
A power-tank and an agility-assassin in a coordinated double assault.
The pressure on Su Yu spiked instantly.
If before he could still play it cool by riding his "death instincts," now it was pure and simple: getting beaten up.
BANG!
Su Yu barely dodged Cheng Lingshuang's knife-hand aimed at his carotid, but Ma Feima's sweeping leg kick caught him across the shin, and he staggered.
Before he could regain his footing, Cheng Lingshuang's palm strike was already at his chest.
No way to dodge.
In that split second, Su Yu's mind raced.
On the left: Ma Feima's roundhouse, probable concussion. On the right: Cheng Lingshuang's Inch Force: Open Heaven, probable two broken ribs.
Which one do you take?
Did you even have to ask?!
Su Yu sucked in a sharp breath, wrenched his body to the right, and deliberately fed his shoulder into Cheng Lingshuang's palm — using the momentum from that impact to just barely slip away from Ma Feima's skull-crushing punch.
"Ngh…"
Su Yu grunted through his teeth. His left shoulder felt like it had been struck by a hammer — burning, radiating heat.
But his eyes were growing brighter.
Pain was the best stimulant.
In the dreamscape, pain usually meant death and a reset.
But here, pain meant he was still alive. It meant this System-enhanced body was adapting at extraordinary speed to the demands of high-intensity combat.
"Again!" Su Yu spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, and the dead stillness in his eyes began to ignite — becoming something close to wild, manic exhilaration.
Ma Feima and Cheng Lingshuang exchanged a glance. They both saw the shock mirrored in each other's eyes.
This guy… was he a monster?
That last hit would've put an ordinary person flat on the ground. Yet Su Yu hadn't gone down. If anything, it was as though he'd had his hidden meridians blasted open — his movements growing smoother, his reactions faster, with every passing exchange.
At the start, he was eating everything they threw at him. If he dodged two out of ten strikes, that counted as a good round.
Gradually, he was dodging five.
Then, even as he evaded, he was clumsily mimicking Cheng Lingshuang's force-generation technique — managing a counter here and there.
He was evolving.
At a visible, viscerally unsettling rate.
Deep in Su Yu's mind, Fenghuang — who had been watching in silence all along — felt a tremor run through her.
How… is this possible?
As a fusion warrior who had lived fifty thousand years, she had witnessed countless brilliant, transcendent geniuses.
Some were born with superhuman strength. Some had swords that sang in perfect resonance with their hearts. Some had a gift for comprehension that bordered on the divine.
But Su Yu was different.
He had no foundation whatsoever.
But he possessed something more terrifying than any talent —
An absolute, bone-deep hunger to survive, and an absolute, intimate familiarity with death.
The Tai Xu Sword Qi's essence lies in Heart, Form, Will, Soul, and Spirit.
The fifth aggregate, "Spirit" — the Eminence of Taixuan — is formless, imageless, clinging to nothing.
Countless practitioners spend their entire lives unable to grasp that state of "Emptiness."
But this man… he had crawled out from death so many times that his very soul had been forged into an unsheathed blade.
If this were that world — the world ravaged by Honkai — if he could learn to channel Honkai energy…
He might genuinely be able to unleash that legendary sword strike.
Though the strike he'd produce would probably be unlike hers, unlike any Sword Eminence she had ever known.
Fenghuang watched Su Yu take yet another of Ma Feima's punches in that bizarrely awkward posture, then use the opportunity to seize Cheng Lingshuang's wrist — only to be shaken off a second later — but that razor-sharp instinct for seizing the opening was simply appalling.
Enough.
Fenghuang let out a quiet, inward sigh.
Since you've already come this far… I, this "relic of the old world," can hardly be too stingy.
"Su Yu. Focus."
A clear, commanding voice suddenly detonated inside Su Yu's mind.
Su Yu — currently in the middle of getting pummeled — jolted.
"Squad Monitor?!"
"Don't lose focus. Give me your body… no. Follow my guidance."
A gentle but immense spiritual force instantly took hold of Su Yu's senses.
In that moment, Su Yu felt the world slow down.
Ma Feima's incoming fist transformed, in his perception, into a clear diagram of muscle-force vectors; Cheng Lingshuang's thrusting sword-fingers became visible trajectories flowing through the air.
"The Form of Tai Xu lies not in technique, but in its Intent. Qi follows the Will; force rises from the earth. Do not resist with brute strength — dissolve it with your Intent."
Su Yu instinctively adjusted his breathing according to Fenghuang's guidance.
The ragged, frantic gasping instantly settled into a long, rhythmic cadence.
His feet stopped their panicked scrambling and planted firmly onto the floor — as though taking root.
Cheng Lingshuang was pressing her advantage, a knife-hand cutting toward the side of Su Yu's neck.
It should have been an unavoidable hit.
But just before her fingertips made contact with Su Yu's skin, Su Yu moved.
Not the ugly, desperate tumble from before. Not the brutal trade of taking damage to deal damage.
He simply raised his hand.
That hand traced a half-circle arc — a motion so unhurried it looked like he was shooing a fly — yet it landed precisely on Cheng Lingshuang's wrist.
"Inch Force: Cloud Mist."
Su Yu's lips barely moved as he breathed the unfamiliar name.
The next instant, a gentle yet irresistible force flowed through Cheng Lingshuang's arm, directly displacing her center of gravity.
Cheng Lingshuang's eyes went wide as she watched helplessly as her strike sailed into empty air — and Su Yu had already pressed in close, his shoulder making contact with a light, almost casual lean.
BANG!
The lean looked effortless, but it held within it an Inch Force energy of a particular character: 崩 — Collapse.
Cheng Lingshuang was thrown back three full steps before she barely managed to steady herself.
Silence fell over the entire dojo.
Even Ma Feima, who had been charging in to help, slammed on the brakes and stood there looking like he'd seen a ghost.
Su Yu stood in the center of the floor — clothes in disarray, blood at the corner of his mouth, a bruise already darkening around one eye.
But the quality of his presence had changed.
If before he had been a rabid dog tearing and snapping for survival, then now he was an ancient sword that had just been quenched in fire — finally showing its edge.
It was a steadiness. A composure. A momentum that only a true master possesses.
Cheng Lingshuang held her tingling arm, and for the first time, those perpetually half-asleep eyes showed genuine gravity and respect.
She knew. In that moment, the person standing before her was no longer the Eldest Senior Brother who needed Little Grandmaster's protection.
He was someone who had just stepped across that threshold, truly entering the world of martial arts…
A peer.
Cheng Lingshuang shook out her numb wrist. Those perpetually half-drowsy eyes were burning with two flames now.
"Eldest Senior Brother." She spoke — her voice quiet, but carrying a stubborn, cutting edge. "We've got enough data on the Honkai Beasts and Zombies by now, right?"
Nearby, Ma Feima nodded along. This one was more direct about it — he yanked off the weighted vest he'd been wearing to simulate a Honkai Beast's bulk, revealing a lean, powerfully built torso underneath, his eyes burning with the feverish look of a starving dog that had spotted a bone.
"Yeah, Eldest Senior Brother! Playing pretend isn't fun anymore. Those last few exchanges… not satisfying enough!" Ma Feima broke into a wide grin, flashing a set of white teeth. "Since we're fellow disciples sparring, how about letting us see the real thing — your actual Tai Xu kung fu?"
These two had completely lost themselves in the fight.
Which made sense — for a martial arts fanatic, encountering a master who could actually make you eat humble pie was more exciting than winning the lottery.
They had keenly sensed that although Su Yu had won just now, what he'd used wasn't the style of the Tai Xu Sword Sect — it was more like a rough-and-ready, live-or-die street-fighting art. What they wanted to see was the Dao of their own school.
Su Yu raised an eyebrow. His gaze swept across the two of them, then settled on Lin Zhaoyu, who was stationed behind the camera not far away.
"Senior Sister Lin, is there still space on the memory card?"
Lin Zhaoyu flashed an OK sign. "Plenty. But, Boss — take it easy on yourself. Medical bills are expensive these days."
"Relax. I know what I'm doing."
Su Yu smiled, turned his head, and knocked on the door of a certain immortal in his mind.
"Squad Monitor, you catching this? Your disciples are asking for a lesson in pain."
Fenghuang's voice came back with a note of helplessness — but beneath it, the particular exasperation of a strict teacher watching unworthy students squander their potential.
"Form without spirit — Old Six's fist is too heavy; he's lost the nimble spirit of Open Heaven. Old Five's sword intent is too diffuse — she has Still Water's tranquility, but none of the razor edge. Those incomplete manuals have led them astray."
"Perfect timing, then." A thought crossed Su Yu's mind. "Since you're already here — why not have Teacher Fenghuang give them a lesson in person? You know this body well enough by now. Playing a substitute, hopping in to carry the fight — once is a novelty, twice is routine."
Silence stretched in his mind for a long moment.
"Su Yu." Fenghuang's voice suddenly turned serious. "Do you understand what this means? This is not a simple matter of borrowing strength. To manifest the Tai Xu Sword Form in reality, I need to completely take over your neural center. In that instant, your consciousness will sink down, and your body will no longer be yours."
"The nature of this is, in some ways, the same as the Herrscher of the Void seizing Kiana's body. If I chose not to return it to you — if I wanted to use your body as a vessel and remain…"
"Okay, okay, okay."
Su Yu cut the old-fashioned spirit's self-analysis right off.
He materialized a little avatar of himself in the consciousness space and gave a breezy, open-handed "be my guest" gesture.
"Squad Monitor, can we skip the brooding monologue? If you actually wanted to steal my body, you could've done it the moment we first linked. Why wait until now?"
"And besides, if you genuinely weren't planning to give it back…" Su Yu let out a sly little laugh. "Then the rest of the Honkai Impact 3rd source code is in your hands. Oh, and Kiana's a picky eater — don't forget to take her to Pizza Hut on Fridays when it's half price. Buy the premium cat food, and also…"
Fenghuang was utterly speechless in the face of this onslaught of last-will instructions.
"You… sometimes I genuinely don't know whether to call you recklessly carefree or hopelessly softhearted."
"Pot, meet kettle. Didn't you wreck yourself half to death just to protect Shenzhou? One soft-hearted fool calling out another — neither of us has any room to talk."
Su Yu sent that thought back, and then completely let go of every tensed nerve in his body.
Fenghuang did not reply.
The quality of the link changed.
The thin mist that had always been present began to slowly disperse, revealing what lay beneath — something that had been coiling and knotting for a hundred thousand years, like the roots of an ancient pine.
"Clear your mind."
Her voice was no longer a sigh.
"Now — I'm coming in."
The next second.
The wind — seemed to stop.
The cicadas that had been screaming a moment ago had gone silent without anyone noticing when.
Su Yu, standing at the center of the floor, slowly closed his eyes.
The frenzied, blood-soaked killing intent that had surrounded him — like a rabid dog's — receded like a tide going out, draining swiftly away until there was nothing left.
In its place: stillness.
Absolute stillness.
Like the surface of an ancient well, perfectly undisturbed. Like a solitary peak standing above the clouds.
When Su Yu opened his eyes again, the manic fervor on Ma Feima's face froze.
Those eyes…
Those pupils reflected the entire dojo — reflected every single one of them — yet seemed to hold nothing at all.
Indifferent. Distant. Ancient beyond measure.
Like a divine idol that had looked down upon the mortal world for a thousand years, suddenly come to life, casting an utterly placid glance at the creatures below.
"The Tai Xu Sword Qi is divided into five aggregates."
"Su Yu" spoke.
The voice was the same voice — but the cadence had changed.
Steady. Clear and cold. Carrying an authority and a weight of years that brooked no argument.
He made no fighting stance. His arms simply hung at his sides — yet somehow every angle of him felt entirely without opening, as though he himself were a sword forged into the fabric of heaven and earth.
"What you have learned is nothing but the surface."
"Today — let me show you… what Tai Xu truly is."
Ma Feima swallowed.
The person in front of him was physically a size smaller. There was none of that fearsome killing intent from before. And yet he felt… his calves were cramping.
That pressure wasn't coming from raw power. It was coming from the absolute, crushing difference in realm.
But he was Ma Feima!
"Sc… Scary stuff! I don't buy it!"
Ma Feima bellowed to steel himself, planted his foot, and launched himself like a cannonball again.
This time he held nothing back — leading with the most ferociously powerful move in the Inch Heart Fist repertoire: [Mountain Collapse].
Faced with this devastating strike, "Su Yu" didn't even raise an eyelid.
He simply stepped forward. One step.
That step swallowed the distance between them.
In the same instant Ma Feima's fist began its swing, he had already ghosted into Ma Feima's chest, close enough to feel his breath.
No dodge. No guard. Just one finger.
The index finger.
It pressed lightly against the wrist joint where Ma Feima was generating his force.
Pfft.
A soft sound.
Ma Feima felt every ounce of power he had gathered — like a punctured balloon — deflate in an instant, completely and utterly gone.
That massive frame was still hurtling forward on momentum, but it had lost all balance, stumbling and crashing into empty air.
"Too slow."
"Su Yu" didn't even turn around. He raised a sleeve and swept it backward.
A gentle, irresistible energy wave swept through, sending Ma Feima tumbling to the ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop.
"This… is this inner energy?!" Ma Feima lay sprawled face-down, too stunned to feel the pain, his face alight with incredulous, rapturous joy. "Eldest Senior Brother! You really did unseal yourself! I knew it! Everything before was just an act! THIS is the real Tai Xu Supreme Arts!"
Eldest Senior Brother had been holding back this whole time!
Those crude, unpolished, seemingly-improvised techniques, that seemingly rapid growth through the exchange — all of it was an ACT!!
THIS was Eldest Senior Brother's true face!
On the other side, Cheng Lingshuang's pupils contracted sharply.
An expert shows their hand, and you know at once.
She didn't share Ma Feima's romantic fantasy about a "sealed cultivation base."
Her instincts were faster than her logic, and her instincts were telling her — something is wrong. This person's breathing rhythm had changed. The interval of his footwork had changed. Even the way his gaze swept across the room had changed — changed so thoroughly and completely that it didn't feel like a man unsealing his power. It felt more like…
A completely different person inhabiting the same body.
And that terrifying degree of physical control — it wasn't achievable through muscle memory. It was the manifestation of martial understanding carried to its absolute limit.
"My turn!"
Cheng Lingshuang's silhouette blurred into a streak, fingertips trailing a sharp whistle of wind, driving straight at "Su Yu's" back.
"Su Yu" seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.
His frame shifted just slightly, sidestepping the strike perfectly, while his single raised hand described a circle — flowing like clouds, like water — and caught Cheng Lingshuang's arm in a winding grasp.
"The Form of Tai Xu: transform force into cloud."
Cheng Lingshuang felt as though she had punched into a mass of cotton. Every ounce of her power was being guided by that one hand, pulling her along irresistibly — her body turning a full circle against her will before she was gently pushed away.
"Su Yu" clasped his hands behind his back. The hem of his clothes stirred with no wind to move it.
"Your heart is restless, your breathing agitated. Your sword heart… has become disordered."
Not a sound in the entire dojo.
Lin Zhaoyu's hands were shaking. She nearly dropped the camera.
Her own martial arts were nothing to write home about, but she could still see when the tone of a fight completely shifted.
One moment it was gritty, brawling shonen action — and now it had suddenly become a cultivation drama beatdown from on high. How did that happen?
And on the sidelines, Kiana — who had been watching in silence this entire time — had gone pale.
In those mismatched eyes, shock, fear, and longing — countless complex emotions tangled together all at once.
On the floor, Su Yu was deflecting Ma Feima's heavy punch with effortless, flowing grace, redirecting that force into Cheng Lingshuang's attack trajectory and letting the two of them collide with each other.
The technique's brilliance, the depth of understanding of force mechanics — it made Lin Zhaoyu, standing behind her equipment, draw a sharp, involuntary breath.
But Kiana wasn't watching any of that.
She was watching the back of Su Yu's neck.
There was a force-generation pattern she recognized there — the way the muscles contracted, the habit of how weight shifted from one foot to the other.
Those eyes.
That stance. That initial form.
That tone of voice when speaking.
Even that faint, detached severity when correcting someone's technique…
Too familiar.
Familiar enough to make her want to cry. Familiar enough to chill her to the bone.
That morning at St. Freya Academy. The squad monitor who wore red-framed glasses had corrected her movements in exactly this way.
Fu Hua — the one who had betrayed her — had looked at her with those exact eyes.
Kiana took a step forward.
Then a second.
A third.
She crossed the boundary line of the floor and walked inside the sensor range of the motion capture array.
Lin Zhaoyu called out to her once. She didn't hear it.
"Su Yu" was sidestepping Cheng Lingshuang's palm strike, and in the instant of the turn, his gaze swept across Kiana.
Their eyes met.
Kiana's voice came out as though forced through clenched teeth.
"You."
Her lips were trembling.
"Who are you, really?"
The air in the dojo seemed to freeze. Ma Feima and Cheng Lingshuang both stopped at the same instant.
Kiana's mismatched eyes were locked onto Su Yu's face, and those eyes were full — brimming — with fear and fury.
"Why are you inside Su Yu's body?"
Her right foot shifted forward half an inch. Her left hand unconsciously closed around the metal ring at her throat.
The one Su Yu had given her as a safety device.
She was now gripping it like the switch for a weapon.
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