The roar of engines tore through the mountain's silence.
The race had officially begun.
Twin beams of light swept across the roadside guardrails, bleaching the graffiti scrawled across them stark white.
A wine-red sports car and a matte-black JDM ran nose to tail.
Wind poured through the half-open window, blowing the hair back from Su Yu's forehead.
He held the wheel with one hand, his wrist turning in small arcs to match the curve of the road.
Deep in his mind, Fenghuang's voice rose.
"Her foundation is solid — more seasoned than I expected, even."
"To force her way through the Genetic Lock threshold on nothing but flesh and willpower alone... that probably means her body has walked the line between life and death more times than we'd like to imagine."
Su Yu eased the throttle down a fraction, letting the tachometer creep toward the red line.
"You're saying she used to do the kind of work where you keep your head loose on your shoulders?"
He sent the thought back to her.
"In my world, Sakura was an assassin for the 'Poison Pupae,'" Fenghuang said. "A killer who made countless people's blood run cold at the mere mention of her name. Even in this peaceful era, where Honkai energy doesn't even exist, some things get carved into the soul and stay there."
"Whatever her past holds, it's probably not a clean sheet of paper. Living as an assassin, forever teetering between life and death, sharpens one's sense of danger to its very limit — that's what triggered her Genetic Lock."
Su Yu looked through the windshield.
About thirty meters ahead, the black JDM was taking the corner at an angle that seemed to defy common sense.
Its brake lights flashed for a pitifully brief instant; the car's body twisted violently at the apex, wrenching the nose back around on sheer traction at the limit, exhaust spitting a burst of blue flame.
She drives like a demon.
"Confident?" Fenghuang asked.
Su Yu laughed out loud inside the cabin.
The laugh nearly drowned out the low growl of the engine.
He freed his right hand and tapped twice on the edge of the dashboard screen.
"Squad Monitor, did you forget what reward the System gave me after that date with Eden?"
Fenghuang didn't answer.
"Right now, I'm the God of Mount Akina — even better than the God of Mount Akina ever was."
Su Yu's eyes narrowed slightly.
The third-tier spiritual power in his mind unfurled completely.
In an instant, the whole mountain road transformed before his eyes.
Every crack in the pavement, the tilt angle of every guardrail, the faintest shift in the wind ahead, even the paths along which heat dissipated from tire friction against asphalt —
all of it laid itself out like a holographic map, etched into his vision without a single blind spot.
This supercar, worth tens of millions, was now nothing more than an instrument in his hands, one that could be broken down and reassembled at will. It held no secrets from him at all.
The old Su Yu would have needed the first-stage Genetic Lock fully open, combined with Tai Xu Sword Qi at full power, just to pull off something like this.
And even then, the strain on his body would have been immense.
But now, this state felt to him about as taxing as sipping coffee in an air-conditioned office.
It wasn't even the same category of thing anymore.
"Don't worry, Squad Monitor."
With that, Su Yu gripped the wheel with both hands and slammed the throttle flat to the floor.
Inside the black car ahead, the temperature was far higher than outside.
Sakura gripped the wheel with both hands, her breath coming short and hard.
The streetlamp posts along the road seemed to slide past like frames of a slow-motion film, and the numbers flickering on the dashboard seemed to stutter along with them.
This was a 'realm' she'd only recently begun to grasp.
At this speed, she felt like she could control everything.
But that wasn't the truth.
In the rearview mirror, those two glaring red lights clung to her like a pair of eyes that refused to let go — no matter how she cut across lanes, no matter how hard she pushed the limit, she couldn't shake them.
Not only could she not shake them — they were closing in, getting closer by the second.
That wasn't pursuit.
That was imitation.
As Sakura swung into the next stretch of consecutive hairpins, she caught, through the mirror, exactly what the car behind her was doing.
Su Yu's line was identical to hers — the angle of entry, the timing of the brakes, a perfect copy of her own driving.
No.
It wasn't just a copy.
His movements were cleaner — no wasted correction from tire slip, the car's body holding a posture so precise it looked like it had been drawn with a compass on a blueprint.
He was crushing her with the very technique she was proudest of.
Sakura clenched her back teeth.
Beneath the fox mask, sweat ran down her chin and dripped onto the collar of her racing suit.
The pressure of being backed into a corner sent blood rushing to her head.
Her temples throbbed relentlessly, and the world in front of her slowed down again.
The limit.
She wanted to break past it once more.
In this city, so peaceful it made her drowsy, she hadn't felt this blood-pounding rush in far too long.
That memory, the one she'd deliberately buried in the deepest part of her heart, surged up suddenly like a breached dam, rising through the ringing in her ears brought on by extreme speed.
...The Far East.
An ancient estate.
A family crest symbolizing power was stamped on the paper doors.
Sakura had been born into a family that couldn't stand the light of day.
To outsiders, they were a conglomerate's dependents, the finest white gloves in the hands of the Far East's political power brokers.
Cleaning up rivals, handling scandals — all the dirty, exhausting work fell to them.
The family's rules were unyielding.
If there were a brother and sister, only one could remain in the light as head of the family; the other had to vanish into darkness, becoming the blade that drew blood.
Her younger sister, Rin, was chosen as heir.
And Sakura, from the day she'd first been able to hold a wooden sword, had known her own fate.
She hadn't minded.
For Rin's sake, what did it matter if her hands were stained with other people's blood?
As long as her sister could sit cleanly, brightly, in that place — she didn't care if she herself rotted in the mud.
She trained herself half to death, drilling those cold, merciless swordsmanship forms until they became instinct, until killing became as simple as eating or drinking.
Until one day.
It was a summer afternoon.
The cicadas' shrieking was loud enough to give anyone a headache.
Rin came running to the training hall out back to find her.
There was no pride of a future family head in the little girl's eyes — only fear of what was to come.
"Sister, I don't want to live like this anymore."
Rin tugged at her sleeve.
That was all she said.
The bamboo sword froze in midair in Sakura's hand.
She looked at her sister's reddened eyes and made a decision that defied every tradition of the family.
She took her and ran.
What followed was a hunt with no end in sight.
Wave after wave of people the family sent after them — seniors who'd once taught her swordsmanship, comrades she'd trained beside — all turned their blades on her.
By the end, even the coldest killers who saw her would find their hands trembling.
The family finally gave in.
Or rather — they grew afraid.
The family head, their father, called them both into his study one stormy night.
The old man's back had already begun to stoop.
He stripped them of every right they held within the family, didn't even let them keep the family name, and drove them out.
Sakura took Rin far from home, all the way to Shenzhou.
In this place called Arc City, she put away her blade and found herself an office job.
Every day she squeezed onto the bus on time, ate convenience-store bento, watched Rin go off to school. She thought she'd finally left the past behind.
But reality liked to play cruel jokes.
Not long after, word came from the Far East.
Upheaval within the family. The head was overthrown. Their father was thrown into prison.
The old man managed to smuggle out one last message, just a few words.
"Don't come back. Fly, like a bird."
That night, Sakura sat alone in her room with the lights off.
She suddenly realized there was nothing she could do.
No matter how sharp her swordsmanship, no matter how clean her killing technique.
She couldn't fight the kind of power that truly wrote the rules, couldn't fight the guns and armies of the modern world.
She didn't even have the right to go back and take one last look.
To smother that helplessness threatening to drive her insane, she picked up her car keys.
Only on the road, throttle to the floor, watching the trees on either side blur into streaks of shadow, listening to the engine's snarl beneath the hood — only then could she find a trace of who she used to be.
She needed power.
The kind of power that could put fate back into the palm of her own hand.
And now, this chance to break her limit, sat right there in the car behind her.
She refused to lose!
Sakura's pupils contracted slightly.
She wrenched the wheel hard; the tail of the car skimmed the edge of the drainage ditch, the two left-side tires nearly lifting off the ground, spraying up a curtain of mud and sparks.
She pushed the speed to the absolute peak her body could endure.
"Beat him!"
Sakura screamed the words inside her mind.
But when she turned to check the mirror again —
The two red lights that had been locked onto her tail were gone.
Sakura's heart dropped.
Before she could react, a deafening roar exploded beside her.
On the right.
The outer lane.
The wine-red supercar — without slowing down at all — had cut straight into the curve from the outside line!
This defied the laws of physics! That kind of centrifugal force should have sent the car flying off the cliff long ago!
But Su Yu's car moved as if it had grown out of the road itself, slicing past her, less than twenty centimeters from her own car's body.
In the instant they passed each other, Sakura, through her lowered window, saw Su Yu.
The man held the wheel with one hand, his other arm resting on the edge of the window. His masked face turned toward her, and their eyes met for just a moment.
A thunderous boom—
The wine-red taillights streaked away, quickly shrinking into the distance.
Sakura's hands froze on the wheel.
Her prized Reaction Speed, the 'Bullet Time' she'd just learned to grasp — against that man's incomprehensible power, it was nothing more than a child's trick.
The gap kept widening.
No matter how hard she pressed the throttle, that red shadow kept getting smaller and smaller.
This was total domination.
At the base of the mountain.
On the open ground before the finish line, several hundred people stared at the massive timing board fixed in the center of the clearing.
Silence.
Dead silence.
The numbers on the timing board flickered wildly, then settled on a figure no one could quite comprehend.
A screech—
The wine-red supercar dragged a long streak of tire marks and came to a stop just past the finish line.
The front brake discs glowed a dim red from the heat, and the air was thick with the acrid smell of burning rubber.
A full thirty-plus seconds passed.
Only then did the matte-black JDM come around the final corner, engine wailing at the edge of its limit, and pull up beside the supercar.
Thirty seconds.
On a mountain road only a few kilometers long, a thirty-second gap.
Even more terrifying — that red-recorded time beat the legendary record the golden Diva had once set, by a full half minute.
Someone in the crowd swallowed audibly.
The young man holding the scoreboard's hand trembled, and the board slipped from his fingers and clattered to the ground.
"Madman..."
he muttered to himself.
Then the cheer that broke out was loud enough to nearly flip the valley inside out.
"That's insane!"
"Is that even a speed a human being can drive? He didn't touch the brakes once the whole way!"
"Who the hell is that guy? With skills like that, he must've flown in on a plane!"
Several spectators pushed their way to the front of the pit area, shouting at the young assistant who was still standing there in a daze, radio in hand.
"Hey! What's that driver's name!"
"Yeah, whoever broke the Diva's record, he's gotta have a name, right?!"
The assistant, startled by the commotion, quickly turned to look for Eden.
Eden stood leaning against a support vehicle, holding a cup of soda water.
She watched the red supercar come to a stop, surprise flickering in her eyes despite herself before it slowly melted into a smile.
"Miss Eden..." the assistant hurried over. "They're asking... what should we call him?"
Eden turned the cup in her hand, her red lips parting slightly.
"Just call him... the Producer."
The assistant blinked, then turned and shouted to the crowd.
"He's... the Producer!"
The crowd fell silent for a beat, then erupted into an even wilder roar.
"The Producer!"
"Insane! The Producer!"
At the edge of this network-less racetrack, countless phones had already recorded the finish and uploaded the footage to underground racing forums across the country.
Tonight, without question, countless people would witness the birth of a new legend.
Sakura pushed her car door open; her legs buckled the moment her feet hit the ground, and she nearly lost her balance.
She braced herself against the door frame and straightened up, breathing hard and fast.
The back of her racing suit was soaked completely through with sweat, cold against her skin.
That single run had drained nearly every ounce of strength she had left.
From overusing her Genetic Lock, her arms were trembling faintly.
Su Yu climbed out of the wine-red supercar.
His breathing was steady, not even a single hair out of place at his temple.
He looked like he'd simply stepped out to buy a soda from the corner store.
Sakura looked at him.
"I lost."
She offered no excuses.
In front of this man, any excuse would sound hollow and meaningless.
"That truth about power you mentioned — what is it, really? I know I said I'd grant you one condition, but I can trade something else for that truth instead."
Su Yu walked up to her.
"Now's not the time for that."
He turned his head, looking toward Eden, who was slowly walking over.
"You're going down the mountain with the Diva."
Sakura blinked, caught off guard.
"And you?"
"You'll find out soon enough," Su Yu said, and turned away without another word.
Eden stepped forward and shot Sakura a look.
Ten-odd minutes later.
The black JDM followed the wine-red supercar and pulled into a hidden side road at the bottom of the mountain pass.
The racing enthusiasts who'd gathered to watch had already been chased off quickly by the assistant and the team's security.
Sakura pushed her door open and got out.
She stood side by side with Eden.
In the distance, along the mountain road, several police cars with flashing red and blue lights were rapidly stretching a cordon.
A large number of fully armed personnel jumped down from armored vehicles and began clearing obstacles from the surrounding area.
Sakura turned to look at Eden, about to speak.
"Sakura." Eden didn't turn around. "Don't worry. We're all friends here."
Hearing this, Sakura reached up and pulled off the fox mask covering her face.
"So I still couldn't slip past your eyes." Sakura stared straight ahead. "Eden."
Eden also removed her golden mask and turned to look at her.
"Eden, you and Su Yu..."
Before Sakura could finish, an Anti-Entropy operative in a black uniform hurried over and held out a military communicator with both hands.
"Ms. Eden, the perimeter has been fully deployed. Please give the final order."
Eden glanced at her wristwatch.
She didn't take the communicator. Instead, she pointed toward the mountaintop.
"Sakura, don't blink," Eden said, lowering her voice. "You're about to find out why we came here tonight — and why Su Yu has power like that."
Sakura followed the direction of her finger.
The first-stage Genetic Lock made her sense of danger toward her surroundings spike exponentially.
The sky, calm just a second ago, suddenly seemed torn open by some enormous hand.
A savage, violent presence surged down from the direction of the mountaintop.
Sakura's pupils snapped shut to pinpoints.
At the center of the clearing atop the mountain — the one that had been used for the race — space itself had warped into a massive black void.
Dark purple energy churned and roiled at the edges of the void.
The pressure of it left her hands and feet ice cold, every hair on her back standing on end.
She couldn't even summon the strength to draw her blade.
"What in the world is that..."
Sakura's voice trembled.
Eden watched the widening rift atop the mountain, the wind lifting her wine-red hair.
"Welcome,"
she said, turning to look Sakura straight in her shock-widened eyes,
"to my and Su Yu's godforsaken workplace."
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