Using Wis'adel's voice, You Yi kept taunting him, sounding exactly like some bratty little gremlin.
"What's wrong? Weren't you doing great just now? Come on, keep going."
The cloaked man ground his teeth and lunged again, stabbing with his dagger at a vicious angle.
You Yi twisted aside. The blade scraped across the symbiotic suit, and with a backhanded punch, he smashed into the inside of the man's elbow, knocking the dagger flying from his grip.
The cloaked man's pupils shook. He immediately threw a punch with his other hand straight at her face.
You Yi tilted his head and dodged it, then drove a knee into his lower abdomen.
The moment the cloaked man doubled over, an elbow crashed into the back of his neck.
Bang!
He slammed face-first into the ground, his face buried in the dirt.
You Yi didn't follow up. He merely took a step back and looked down at the cloaked man struggling to push himself back up, his tone thick with disdain.
"That's it?"
The cloaked man braced himself on the ground with both hands, his whole body trembling—not just from pain, but from fear.
He had been a mercenary for twenty years, crawling out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. He had seen countless troublesome opponents.
But never anything like this.
He had begun to suspect that either he or this little brat had been possessed by something evil.
And she had clearly had chances to kill him.
Those few exchanges just now—if she had wanted to, any one of them, combined with that Originium Art of hers, could have taken his life.
But she hadn't.
She had only used her fists, one blow after another, slowly tormenting him like a cat toying with a mouse.
"You…" He raised his head, blood running from the corner of his mouth. "Who the hell are you?!"
You Yi looked down at him, half-smiling.
"Why don't you guess?"
That single line, both in expression and tone, was uncannily similar to the future Wis'adel.
A savage look entered the cloaked man's eyes.
He knew he wasn't going to live.
A gap like this wasn't something he could bridge just by risking his life.
In that case—
He exploded upward in a sudden burst, abandoning defense, abandoning evasion, pouring every ounce of strength into one final strike as he hurled himself at her, intending to take her down with him.
Watching him charge, You Yi sighed.
"This stopped being fun."
He raised his right hand.
Boom.
A dark-red beam punched straight through the man's skull.
The cloaked man lurched forward one last step, then collapsed limply and never moved again.
You Yi lowered his hand, glanced at the corpse, and muttered to himself, "Couldn't you at least let me stretch a little longer?"
The canyon fell quiet for a moment.
Far away, the hidden attackers on both sides of the cliffs all froze when they saw that scene.
You Yi looked up at those figures on the canyon walls, and suddenly inspiration struck.
He grabbed the cloaked man's corpse, hoisted it high over his head, and shouted at the ambushers:
"Shame on the enemy!"
"I've stripped him already!"
Then, worried they might not understand, he added:
"I've taken the enemy commander's head!"
The only response he got was a fierce volley of arrows and bullets.
He scrambled awkwardly behind a boulder as shots and arrows clattered against the stone, sending chips of rock and ricochets flying everywhere.
"This isn't how the script's supposed to go!"
He looked genuinely offended.
"At a moment like this, aren't they supposed to lose morale, scatter, and run?!"
Wis'adel was full of black lines. "What nonsense are you talking about?"
Crouched behind the rock, You Yi dodged the attacks screaming overhead. "In the normal plot, once the commander dies, the little guys are supposed to surrender or flee, aren't they?"
"And who told you that?"
"That's how it's written in stories!"
Wis'adel fell silent, feeling like she'd wasted her feelings.
You Yi peeked out to check the situation outside.
Those ambushers had split into two groups. One group kept up constant ranged fire to pin him down, while the other was moving down from both canyon walls, trying to surround the area.
He pulled his head back in and sighed helplessly.
"Fine. Time to show my real skill."
He raised his right hand.
Up on the cliff, one of the archers using Originium Arts to enchant his arrows was firing away enthusiastically.
"You really think your grandpa here can't do anything to you, huh? Getting cocky now, are we?"
Bang.
A dark-red beam blew straight through the man's head, and the body tumbled from the cliff face.
A perfect headshot at a hundred meters.
"Told you I'm an FPS expert."
You Yi even pretended to blow on the muzzle.
Wis'adel's consciousness watched all of this quietly. The feeling was strange.
Her body was moving, fighting—
But the one controlling it wasn't her.
She watched as You Yi darted and shifted behind cover, every peek timed perfectly to avoid the incoming arrows, every shot dropping another enemy with pinpoint accuracy.
If she had ever experienced a full-dive body-sense film, maybe she would have had words for what this felt like.
As he fought, You Yi kept running his mouth.
"See? This is what proper shooting posture looks like."
"And the accuracy on their side is terrible. They can't even catch a 0.3-second timing window. I'm giving them chances and they still can't capitalize."
"My grandma could've landed at least one shot!"
Wis'adel: "…"
At last, she couldn't help saying, "Can you focus on the fight?"
You Yi replied in complete seriousness, "I am focused. I'm fighting and teaching you at the same time."
Another precise shot rang out, and a mercenary who had only exposed half his body dropped on the spot.
You Yi slipped back behind the boulder and mentally estimated his KD.
"Almost done. Only a few left."
He peeked out again. The surviving mercenaries had already ducked back behind cover and no longer dared expose themselves.
"That's it? They chickened out already?"
He sounded genuinely disappointed.
"I wasn't done having fun yet."
At that moment, Wis'adel suddenly asked, "Were you human before?"
The question didn't come out of nowhere. Earlier, You Yi had said, Been a while since I had a human body. He might not have meant anything by it, but she had heard it clearly.
It could be explained as him having controlled a human body before. But combined with all his usual behavior, he seemed far more like a person than some monstrous lifeform.
And so, in her mind, a possibility she had never previously considered had slowly taken shape.
After hesitating for a while, she finally asked it now.
You Yi paused, then laughed.
"Yes. And not even a human from this world."
He didn't hide it.
Or rather, he didn't think there was any need to hide information like that.
They were in a symbiotic relationship now. Their physical connection was closer than any other kind of bond. If telling her the truth could narrow the distance between them even a little, then it was worth it.
Wis'adel's voice was stunned. "Not from this world…"
She had only felt a strange stir at the thought that You Yi might once have been human.
Instead, he had tossed out another idea she found even harder to grasp.
There were other worlds beyond Terra?
She had never considered that.
She had never even had the concept.
Sensing her confusion, You Yi explained it in terms simple enough for even a child to grasp.
"Terra is just one grain of sand among countless worlds. Beyond it, there are endless other worlds, far vaster than you can imagine. There's no need to be so surprised."
"Is that so… So outside Terra, it's really that vast…"
Wis'adel fell silent.
What she radiated now wasn't just curiosity, but even more confusion.
From words alone, she couldn't picture it.
Fortunately, You Yi's real goal was simply to divert her attention—to soften any discomfort she might feel from learning that he had once been human, and very likely a man at that.
In truth, Wis'adel had thought about that possibility before. Unexpectedly, she didn't feel especially resistant to it. Or rather, she had long since gotten used to You Yi's voice. Deep down, she had already always regarded him as male.
You Yi glanced upward.
During the time they'd been talking, those remaining mercenaries had already quietly slipped away. Apparently, they had no intention of dying alongside their comrades.
That left him a little disappointed.
Then his gaze shifted to the transport wagon, which had remained silent the entire time.
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