The blazing sun hung directly over the outskirts of Arc City.
There was no wind.
In the distance, the asphalt road had warped under the heat, the air shimmering like boiling, transparent glue.
The barbed-wire fence ringing Starfire Base glinted with a blinding silver light under the sun.
Two fully armed sentries stood in the shade, rifles raised, eyes sweeping warily across the empty buffer zone.
Su Yu stood beneath a withering poplar tree less than ten meters from the guard tower.
Shadow Stalk was running silently, unseen.
His breathing had slowed to its absolute limit, the gaps between heartbeats stretching out like those of a hibernating animal.
To the sentries' eyes, the spot where he stood was nothing but a tangle of shadow cast by the leaves overhead.
In his hand, Su Yu carried a takeout container of braised noodles — he'd spotted the place on the way, the food smelled decent, and it would make the perfect care package for Kevin, that hopeless noodle addict.
He lifted his foot and stepped soundlessly across the buffer line.
No one was drilling in formation on the training grounds.
The recruits Rita had tormented half to death were, at this very moment, savoring the last precious hours of their leave.
The vast, packed-earth training ground stood empty, nothing but drifting dust and the sharp reek of rubber.
Su Yu narrowed his eyes.
At the far edge of his sight, two bare-chested figures came into view.
"Hah!"
The cry came with a low, guttural roar.
A two-hundred-kilogram mining-truck tire was hauled bodily off the ground by a pair of arms corded with bulging veins, flipped end over end through the air, and slammed down onto the scorching yellow earth, kicking up a cloud of dust half a meter high.
It was Kevin.
His signature shock of white hair was soaked through with sweat, rivulets running down the sharply defined muscles of his back and disappearing into camo pants already half-drenched.
About ten meters behind him.
Siegfried stood bent over, hands braced on his knees, sucking down great gulps of air.
An identical massive tire lay at his feet.
This veteran agent in his forties, normally content to slack off with his hands stuffed in his pockets, now had muscles gone soft with age twitching uncontrollably.
Su Yu leaned against a row of concrete pylons at the edge of the grounds.
Eye of Deconstruction wasn't fully engaged — he kept it running at the barest baseline scan.
Even so, the data it fed back was enough to make Su Yu's eyelid twitch.
Lactic acid buildup, far past healthy limits.
Cardiac contractile force, hovering right at the critical threshold.
Muscle fibers riddled with countless microtears.
These two weren't training.
This was self-punishment.
They were wringing every last drop of surplus strength from their bodies through something bordering on outright self-destruction.
"Kevin."
Siegfried walked over to a nearby metal rack and grabbed two bottles of mineral water.
He twisted the cap off one and all but poured it straight down his throat, then tossed the other bottle to Kevin.
"Hm?"
Kevin didn't bother catching it.
He let the bottle thud into the dirt and simply collapsed flat on his back onto ground baked hard as an iron plate under the blazing sun.
He breathed in great heaving gulps, his chest rising and falling violently.
Father and son remained like that — one lying down, one standing.
"As for Cecilia," Siegfried wiped a bead of sweat from his chin and settled himself down on the huge tire, "she's still waiting on us for an explanation."
He looked up at the sky.
"Good thing you had the wits to drag Theresa straight to the hospital and improvise off whatever the attending doctor said — spun up that lie about Cecilia collapsing from overwork."
Siegfried let out a bitter chuckle.
"Now Theresa's planted herself at the hospital like some kind of guardian statue, refusing to let Cecilia check out. If not for that, I think the two of us would've been in real trouble this time."
"It's nothing. I just figured — if it were that little troublemaker Su Yu—"
His fist slowly clenched at his side, scooping up a handful of scorching yellow dirt.
"He'd have done the exact same thing — squeezed every last ounce of work out of Auntie."
Siegfried looked down at the half-empty water bottle in his hand.
"Heh."
The old man's laugh sounded worse than crying.
"You two really do get along, don't you."
Siegfried tipped his head back and drained the rest of the bottle in one go.
He crushed the empty plastic bottle into a ball and tossed it aside.
He stood, slapping the back of his hand against his right leg, which was trembling from exhaustion.
"So? One more round?"
Kevin let go of the dirt in his hand.
He rolled over, pressed his hands into the ground, and hauled himself up.
"Yeah."
He walked over to the huge tire and hooked his hands under its base again.
"One more round, then I'll head back to the studio."
Kevin pressed his forehead against the rough rubber.
"The marketing push for the new update's about to start. I need to go help out."
Siegfried walked over to his own tire.
He didn't bend down right away — instead he studied his son's broad, sweat-soaked back.
"Son."
"What?" Kevin didn't turn around.
"I know you're in pain," Siegfried said, his voice low. "Everyone is."
He stepped closer, resting his palm on the rubber, hot from the sun.
"But no matter what, you need to take care of your body. If you really can't keep going, then rest. No one will blame you."
Siegfried looked at the veins bulging along Kevin's arms.
"Even if you've already opened that so-called Genetic Lock, you—"
"That bastard, Su Yu."
Kevin's voice suddenly rose.
He cut Siegfried off.
With a sudden violent heave—
BOOM!
The two-hundred-kilogram tire went flying, flipped clean over, and slammed back down onto the ground.
"No one blamed him either."
Kevin turned around, chest heaving, his ice-blue eyes shot through with red.
"But he still did everything he possibly could."
Under the blazing sun,
father and son stared at each other through the swirling dust.
A long moment passed.
before Kevin's rigid shoulders slowly slumped.
"Dad."
Kevin's voice turned hoarse again, carrying a faint tremor even he didn't seem to notice.
"I just—"
He lowered his eyes to his own hands, the skin scraped raw and bleeding from the friction.
"I don't want to watch the people around me slip away again while I just stand here, helpless."
Behind the concrete pylons,
Su Yu crouched silently in the shadows.
The sun grew more merciless by the minute.
He watched the distant figure of Kaslana — the man who normally wore a dead-fish expression, who in this world had fully evolved into a stone-faced CEO.
If he really had died silently in that Rift, without a trace—
knowing Kevin's stubborn, one-track nature,
he'd have shouldered every ounce of blame himself.
He'd have punished himself over and over, chasing after 'what ifs' that might not even exist, until he drove himself completely mad.
After all, that hopeless streak of idiocy was carved right into the Kaslana bloodline.
Su Yu drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled the hot air filling his lungs.
The System's smug, needling voice was floating around in his head.
He tugged his baseball cap down lower, shadowing most of his face.
"Well, since I'm already here—"
Su Yu flexed his knuckles, a string of pops cracking out.
"Bit of a shame, really."
His feet shifted into stance.
his weight tilting slightly forward.
"But Kevin, let's see just what you've managed to train up these past few days."
Whoosh.
Su Yu's figure left behind the faintest afterimage on the spot.
His third-stage spiritual power drove his body's potential to its absolute limit, letting him explode into a burst of speed that defied all reason — with no exoskeleton armor to assist him at all.
He became a gray whirlwind tearing across the training ground.
Kevin, just bending down to grab the next tire, felt the hairs on the back of his neck snap upright.
The instinctive danger-sense that came with his first-stage Genetic Lock blared its highest-level alarm in an instant.
Bullet Time forcibly engaged.
Kevin's world slowed to a crawl.
Flecks of dust hung suspended in midair.
He saw a blurred gray shape closing on him from behind and to the side, moving at a speed his retinas couldn't fully track.
Extreme danger.
Kevin's brain screamed the order.
But—
his body simply couldn't keep pace with his attacker.
The muscle lag brought on by overexertion was magnified beyond measure in that instant.
"Watch out!"
Siegfried's shout hadn't even fully left his throat.
Kevin could only barely cross his arms over his chest, dropping into the most basic defensive stance.
THUD!
It felt like being hit head-on by a fully loaded truck.
Massive kinetic force surged through the fist and slammed straight into Kevin's crossed arms.
Kevin flew backward like a kite with its string cut.
His feet plowed two deep furrows through the dry earth.
He gritted his teeth, bracing to roll on impact and absorb the coming blow.
But the violent crash he expected never came.
Just as he was about to hit the ground, an impossibly gentle force caught him under the back.
As if an unseen giant hand had caught him securely, absorbing every ounce of recoil along the way.
Kevin stood there, dazed.
He shook out his numbed arms.
That punch had looked and felt earth-shattering, his blood roiling from the impact, yet it hadn't left so much as a scratch on him.
His attacker had clearly, at the last possible instant, controlled the force with exquisite precision.
The wind slowly scattered the swirling dust.
A figure in a gray short-sleeved shirt and a worn baseball cap now stood where Kevin had been standing.
Even in this scorching heat, the man had deliberately pulled the cap low to hide most of his face, his features unreadable.
But the figure cockily crooked a finger at Kevin, then flipped his wrist in a provocative gesture, thumb pointed down in blatant disrespect.
The sheer punchable smugness of it was obvious even from ten meters away.
"Enemy attack?! Kevin!"
Siegfried had already snapped out of his shock.
He rolled around the tire, agent instincts snapping him straight into a fighting stance.
He and Kevin traded a quick glance.
No words were needed.
Father and son closed in on the gray figure from either side, pincering him in the middle.
"Go!"
Siegfried unleashed a vicious whip kick low at his opponent's legs, cutting off any retreat.
At the same instant, Kevin used his own sprinting momentum to leap into the air, his right fist screaming through the wind straight at the man's face.
High and low, together.
A perfect pincer, no escape.
Su Yu stood right where he was, hands still tucked into the pockets of his hoodie.
His third-stage spiritual power spread out like an invisible spider's web, feeding back to his brain every grain of dust and every shift in the air within a ten-meter radius.
The exact degree of contraction in Siegfried's flexing muscles.
The shift in Kevin's center of gravity as he hung in midair.
To Su Yu's eyes, their movements were as slow as a couple of old men doing tai chi in the park.
Just as the toe of Siegfried's kick was about to reach his knee,
Su Yu tapped the ground lightly with the tip of his right foot.
His body slid sideways half a foot to the left in a way that flagrantly violated Newton's laws of motion.
Siegfried's whip kick swept past, grazing the fabric of his pants and finding nothing but air, the gust of it snapping the hem of his shirt.
An instant later, he leaned his upper body back at an exaggerated angle.
Kevin's heavy, powerful punch grazed the brim of his cap as it thundered past.
Both attacks came up empty at once.
But the assault didn't stop there.
The moment Kevin landed, he swept out with a low kick.
Siegfried, riding the momentum of his spin, drove a heavy elbow toward Su Yu's back.
Su Yu finally pulled his hands from his pockets.
He moved like a fallen leaf caught in a storm.
Dodging left, weaving right.
Bending back, twisting aside.
Every single moment looked like a hair's-breadth brush with disaster.
Each lethal strike seemed to graze his nose or his vitals by mere millimeters.
Yet not one of them ever landed.
The close-combat skills Rita had spent the past month drilling into him at Starfire Base — through methods that made death seem like a mercy —
were on full, glorious display now.
He wasn't just dodging.
He was counterattacking, too.
But these counterattacks weren't meant to hurt anyone.
Su Yu pressed his fingers together.
Tai Xu Sword Qi compressed to its limit, condensing into a slender, invisible needle of qi.
In the instant their bodies crossed—
his index finger tapped, lightning-fast, just beneath the shoulder blade of Siegfried's overextended right arm.
Siegfried felt only the faintest tingling ache deep in his shoulder.
And then, miraculously, the muscle group stiffened by overexertion loosened right up.
With a turn,
the back of Su Yu's finger brushed against Kevin's right side, still faintly trembling from the successive heavy strikes.
The qi needle sank in.
Kevin felt the burning ache of oxygen-starved lungs dissolve instantly under a rush of cool qi, his breathing clearer than it had ever been.
The fight went on.
Yellow dust flew.
The three figures wove together in a blur across the training ground.
But the longer they fought, the more Kevin and Siegfried's confusion deepened.
As the minutes passed, instead of growing more exhausted,
their bodies — pushed to the edge of collapse by days of brutal overtraining — were somehow recovering at breakneck speed.
Strength kept welling up from somewhere deep inside them, endless.
"What in the world is going on..."
Siegfried muttered to himself even as he kept swinging.
This wasn't a fight — this was basically getting a top-tier massage for free.
Just then—
Su Yu spotted his opening.
Siegfried and Kevin closed in from both sides once more.
One left, one right — two fists loaded with power thundered at Su Yu's face from either side.
This time, Su Yu didn't dodge.
He shot both hands out.
Smack! Smack!
Two dull, heavy impacts.
Su Yu caught both fists in his open palms.
The colossal force behind them dragged his feet half a meter across the ground, gouging two shallow trenches.
But he held firm.
"Okay, okay, that's enough."
Su Yu held onto both their fists.
He let his taut muscles relax.
A gust of hot wind swept across the training ground.
It knocked the worn baseball cap right off his head.
The cap tumbled through the air and landed in the dust some distance away.
Su Yu lifted his head.
That thoroughly punchable face, corners of the mouth curled into a shameless, carefree grin,
was fully exposed under the blinding midday sun.
"You two really don't hold back, huh."
Su Yu let out a breath and shook out his numbed wrists.
"Try not to actually beat me to death, okay~"
Silence.
Dead silence.
The wind died.
Even the distant chirp of insects seemed to hit pause.
Siegfried and Kevin stood frozen, as if turned to stone on the spot.
Both of them yanked their hands back at the same instant, as if scalded.
Kevin stared, unblinking, at the living, breathing man standing right in front of him.
His Adam's apple bobbed.
His chest heaved violently, as if something inside were slamming against its walls, desperate to break free.
Then—
Kevin's fist clenched hard.
He stepped forward.
Twisting from the hips, putting everything he had into it,
he drove a punch straight into Su Yu's chest.
THUMP!
There was no technique in that punch — only raw, unfiltered emotion.
Su Yu didn't activate his Genetic Lock's defenses.
Didn't dissipate the force either.
He took the hit head-on, full force.
The impact sent him toppling backward.
"Thump."
Su Yu landed flat on his back on the scorching dirt.
Fine dust puffed up around him.
The impact against his back and the dull ache in his chest made him wince.
He lay flat, staring up at the blindingly blue, cloudless sky.
A shadow fell over the sun.
Kevin stepped up over him, head bowed, looking down.
Backlit as he was, Su Yu couldn't make out the expression on his face.
All he could see was that the shoulders of the man who normally stood ramrod straight and stone-faced were now trembling, ever so slightly.
A single warm drop of liquid.
fell without warning from above.
Splat.
It burst into a tiny splash.
Su Yu froze for a moment, struck by the raw emotion of it.
"Hey, hey, hey."
Still lying on the ground, he bared his teeth in a mock wail.
"I just crawled my way out of that damn Spatial Rift by the skin of my teeth to come see you guys."
"And the second I get here you hit me this hard? I survive the monsters just to get beaten to death by you — you unfilial son!"
"Cut the crap!"
Kevin's voice was thick, nasal.
A dust-covered hand reached down, stopping right in front of Su Yu.
Su Yu smiled.
He reached up with his right hand and gripped it tight.
A powerful pull followed.
Kevin hauled him up off the ground.
The two of them stood face to face.
Kevin looked at the man in front of him.
The hard, rigid lines of his face finally, completely melted away.
He took a deep breath.
"Welcome back," Kevin said, clapping him hard on the shoulder. "You incorrigible bastard."
Siegfried stood a few steps away.
watching the two young men celebrate their reunion with fists and foul language.
He wiped the sweat from his face.
The pressure that had weighed on him these past few days finally lifted, dissolving away with that dull thud of a body hitting the ground, right there at high noon.
He walked over to the two of them, shaking his head with a smile.
"Whatever happened, I'm just glad you're back."
Siegfried pulled his phone from his pocket, fingers flying across the screen.
"Su Yu, I'm telling Kiana right now. That girl's going to lose her mind with joy when she finds out you're alive."
"Wait a second."
Su Yu quickly raised a hand, stopping Siegfried mid-dial.
"Uncle Siegfried," Su Yu said, lowering his voice, "don't tell Kiana yet."
Siegfried's finger froze above the screen, looking at him in confusion. "Why not?"
Su Yu brushed the dust off his clothes.
"Don't spread word that I'm back yet," he said, looking between the two of them. "Keep training as planned. Once I've handled a few things, I'll explain everything to you."
Kevin studied Su Yu's face — dust-streaked, yet still unable to hide that unmistakable glint of mischief.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
He knew Su Yu far too well.
This guy was definitely cooking up some scheme too shameless to see the light of day.
"Fine."
Kevin punched him hard on the shoulder — plenty of force, but no killing intent behind it.
"Guess I'm just cursed with rotten luck, stuck with a con man like you for the rest of my life," Kevin said through gritted teeth. "Go handle whatever scheme you're plotting."
He jabbed a finger at Su Yu's nose.
"Then get your ass back to the studio and beg forgiveness on your knees. You'd better brace yourself — when you come back, you're going to die a very ugly death."
He put extra weight on the words.
"I promise."
Su Yu grinned and backed away two steps, all shameless good cheer.
"Copy that, copy that! You two carry on training, I'll get out of your hair."
He waved at the two of them, then turned to Siegfried.
"Uncle Siegfried, that van you've got parked outside for cover — the one that says 'Arc City Water and Electric Repair' — mind if I borrow it? I can't exactly walk back to the city from out here in the sticks."
Siegfried sighed and pulled the car keys from his pocket, tossing them across the distance.
"Drive easy. The brakes on that clunker aren't great."
Su Yu caught the keys cleanly and flashed an okay sign.
He pointed toward the railing not far off. "Noodles — brought them for you. Pretty good, eat them while they're hot."
Then he turned and strode off toward the edge of the base.
Not until that gray figure had vanished completely around the corner
did Kevin finally look away.
Ten minutes later,
a battered, paint-peeling Wuling Hongguang van, its side stenciled with 'Arc City Professional Water and Electric Repair,' rattled its way from Starfire Base's access road onto the main highway.
The windows were rolled all the way down.
Scorching wind roared in through the cab, whipping the loose strands of hair across Su Yu's forehead into disarray.
He kept one hand resting on the wheel.
"Next up,"
Su Yu watched the training base shrink in the rearview mirror.
"time to head for the Anti-Entropy underground lab."
His gaze slowly turned serious.
"Time to go see Uncle Yang."
The card named [The World] slowly unfurled before Su Yu's eyes — and somewhere in the back of his mind, he sensed that Welt was about to hand him one hell of a surprise.
____
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