As the novice Zombie was defeated, it dissolved into a stream of data and scattered.
Rin took a deep breath, steadying the tremor still lingering from that novice-zone fight, and lightly swiped her finger across the metal hilt.
Following Carole's frantic pitch in the group chat that morning—"Go live, farm the bug, and fleece Senior Su Yu for all he's worth"—Rin didn't hesitate to switch on the AR glasses' built-in livestream function.
She slapped together a title on the fly—"Daily Life of a Newbie Fried Tofu"—and, using the default female silhouette avatar the System had assigned her, went live just like that, fresh-faced and unprepared.
Morning in Arc City; the streets were still mostly empty.
Rin walked the streets carrying her holographic katana, which shimmered with a faint blue glow, her movements a little stiff as she searched for the low-level monster blips marked red on her radar.
With her sweet looks, soft voice, and the unmistakably green way she walked and held her blade, she radiated pure newbie energy.
Her stream had barely been live a few minutes before the algorithm pushed it out, quickly drawing in a crowd of idle viewers who loved a good "watch them grow" story.
[Whoa, a wild cutie has appeared!]
[Those clumsy little moves are adorable, like a kitten swatting its paws.]
[You've got this, streamer! Don't be scared—brave little cow, fear no hardship!]
Rin paid the danmaku no mind.
She knew perfectly well her reflexes were bottom-tier, so she fought with extra caution.
"Whoosh!"
A Level 2 low-tier Zombie lunged at her, and Rin instinctively sidestepped.
The AR system's feedback was near-instant—her S-rank Reaction Speed perfectly triggered an invincibility frame.
[Perfect Dodge!]
Riding the momentum of that frame, she reversed her blade and cleanly emptied the monster's health bar in one stroke.
The monster dissolved into glittering golden data fragments, and a few virtual coins dropped to the ground.
Rin bent down to collect the coins and, out of habit, tapped the [Withdraw] button in the System backend.
Ten seconds later, her phone buzzed.
The screen lit up with a bank text, plain as day: "Your account ending in XXXX has received RMB 45.00."
The viewers who'd just been discussing her footwork suddenly erupted.
[Wait, what? Am I seeing things? Was that a withdrawal text?]
[She killed a few mobs and made 45 bucks?! miHoYo is really throwing money around!]
[I'm out, I'm out, forget the stream—I'm heading to Arc City to sweep the streets for loot!]
Rin looked at the new balance on her card, and her eyes curved into a happy little arc.
She knew exactly how much this money mattered.
Her sister Sakura had once been an assassin with blood on her hands, and through those dark, lightless days, killing was the only thing she'd known how to do.
After fleeing to this city, Sakura had washed the blood from her hands for Rin's sake, buried her old name, and had to learn even the simplest household appliances from scratch, clumsily picking up part-time shifts at a convenience store to make ends meet.
Thankfully, after meeting Sister Eden, Sakura had finally found honest, respectable work.
But the cost was constant overtime, day and night.
"If I can just earn a bit more, Sakura can come home earlier..."
Rin tightened her grip on her katana, her eyes hardening with resolve.
Just as she was gearing up for a serious grind, trading the occasional word with her stream...
Right above her AR field of view, as if hacked, blinding golden server-wide announcements began scrolling wildly across the screen:
[Congratulations to player "Jiahao" for claiming the server-first kill of a Chariot-class Honkai Beast!]
[Congratulations to player "Jiahao" for triggering a hidden combo achievement—reward: 100,000 RMB cash!]
[Congratulations to player "Jiahao" for shattering the speedrun record, crushing all rivals!]
The unending stream of golden banners lit up her whole field of vision, dazzling and almost blinding.
The beta-test group chat in the corner of Rin's view exploded like a powder keg.
Carole's rage-face stickers rattled off like machine-gun fire:
"Is this guy hacking with invincibility?! I was riding my mom's police motorcycle with the throttle pinned to the floor, and I never even saw the monster's shadow—how does he already have the first kill?!"
The group members wailed in unison, huddling together in despair:
"What's even the point of playing anymore? I can't even beat a Level 5 Zombie—got chased three blocks—and this guy's already farming Chariot-class Honkai Beast bosses?!"
"What really pisses me off is he posted on the official forum mocking all of us as idiots! The title was 'Sorry, wrong person got the slot'—I swear my fists are clenched, I want to reach through the internet and punch him!"
Watching the chat boil with outrage, Rin gave a wry smile.
This "Jiahao" clearly had abilities that ran bottomlessly deep, but his talent for pulling the entire server's aggro onto himself was, without question, first place too.
Still, she wasn't here to fight for first place anyway—she just wanted to earn some money.
The meager pocket change from the newbie phase was, for a girl who urgently needed money, a drop in the bucket.
She closed the noisy group chat and followed the blinking red dot on her radar into a dim, out-of-the-way dead-end alley.
She'd assumed it would just be another low-level monster hiding in a corner, like the ones she'd fought before.
But when the holographic particles cleared, what stood before her was an [Elite Blade Zombie], clad in battered iron-gray armor, both hands gripping a long katana.
"Ding-dong~"
The Elf Elysia's notification chime sounded right on cue, but this time her tone wasn't so light-hearted:
"Warning, Miss Fried Tofu~ You've exited the newbie protection period! Failing a challenge against an elite monster will trigger the death penalty mechanic! Every time you respawn, a percentage of your coins will drop, so fight carefully!"
Rin froze for a moment.
Someone in the beta group chat had just been discussing this mechanic.
Someone had said: "I knew it couldn't be that simple. If there were no death penalty, everyone would just zerg-rush the boss in relay and grind it down eventually."
More people were wailing in despair in the chat: "What kind of monster even is this Jiahao guy? He's playing solo, and we're all first-timers just like him—how is he soloing bosses with zero deaths and zero damage taken?! Does that even make sense?"
On the leaderboard right now, "Jiahao's" score bar had left second place in the dust, not even a taillight in sight—like some unreasonable, stat-breaking monster.
Rin took a deep breath and pushed the distractions out of her mind.
"It's fine. I've built up some experience—it's time to test myself."
But the moment the elite monster slowly settled into an attack stance, Rin's breath caught in her throat.
This monster—the way it leaned slightly forward, the way its withered fingers gripped the blade, the cold, deathly stillness of its face beneath the shattered helmet—
all of it matched, perfectly, the ruthless executioners buried deep in Rin's memory, from that underground family that had been nothing short of a living hell.
"Shing—!"
The monster ripped its blade from its sheath.
In the simulated light of her AR view, the blade flashed an icy, bone-chilling gleam, accompanied by the hair-raising rasp of steel leaving its sheath.
In that instant, the fragile wall Rin had barely managed to build inside herself collapsed like a breached dam.
It felt like she'd been dragged bodily back into that blood-soaked basement.
The nauseatingly thick stench of blood became real, a hallucination flooding her nostrils.
Rin's face went paper-white, her hands and feet turning cold.
The holographic blade gripped tight in her hand began flickering violently, her erratic heart rate and trembling fear causing its light to stutter in and out.
She wanted to retreat, to flee, but her legs felt filled with lead, nailed to the spot, refusing to obey.
"Raaargh—!"
The elite monster let out a roar and raised its katana high, bringing it down on Rin's head with thunderous force.
"Clang!"
Rin barely managed to raise her blade in time to block, but the intense simulated vibration through the hilt numbed her hand, and she nearly lost her grip.
She fought and retreated in the same breath, trapped in a hopeless, purely defensive standstill.
Her health bar plummeted with each blow, blaring red warnings flashing without pause.
"Ah!"
Rin cried out as her footing gave way—she tripped on loose rubble underfoot, lost her balance, and fell backward.
She was about to slam hard onto the cold, unyielding ground—and her brain might well suffer real psychological trauma from the incoming "virtual death signal."
The stream's danmaku was instantly flooded with panic:
[Watch out!!]
[Dodge, streamer, dodge!]
[This monster's pressure is way too intense, log off, streamer!]
Rin sat sprawled on the ground, watching in despair as the blade, raised high and reeking of death, began to fall.
Memories of blood, darkness, and executioners tore ravenously at what was left of her sanity.
As she closed her eyes to await death, a single tear slid from the corner of her eye, and in a voice so faint it was almost inaudible, she helplessly called out the name:
"I'm sorry... Sakura... I really can't do anything after all, can I..."
Right at that razor's-edge moment, when everyone thought the stream was about to cut to a grisly black screen—!
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Without any warning, the dead-silent alley suddenly erupted with pumping cyberpunk electro-DJ music, turned all the way up!
The heavy bass beats rattled the walls so hard flakes of plaster came loose.
A figure in a black hoodie, a bizarre smiley-face mask over their face, dropped straight out of the sky like a bolt of black lightning tearing through the dark.
One hand rested casually in the pocket of his baggy hoodie.
His other hand, steady and gentle, curled around Rin's slender waist, catching her securely in midair.
Not only did he save her from falling, he swept her clear of the elite monster's fatal strike zone in the same split-second motion.
Still shaken, Rin found herself leaning against this sudden, unexpected embrace.
By all rights, the [Perfect Maid's Magic Mirror] should have flawlessly altered the user's build, voice, and even their outward presence.
No ordinary person could possibly recognize who was behind this disguise.
But Rin was different.
She possessed a terrifying S-rank Reaction Speed—not merely fast physical reflexes, but a direct expression of razor-sharp mental acuity.
At such close physical contact, her senses were amplified beyond measure.
She caught a faint, reassuring scent lingering just beneath her nose.
Though she'd only met Su Yu a handful of times, the impression had stuck deep—after all, his name thundered across the internet.
Such a famous figure was her sister's friend, and had even personally visited her and Sakura at home.
It would have been hard not to remember him.
She could feel the steady, powerful rhythm of his heartbeat through his chest—utterly unshaken, solid as bedrock.
When she looked up, the eyes gazing down at her past the smiley mask were deep and calm.
Not a trace of the arrogance and swagger that the persona "Jiahao" was supposed to carry.
Rin's pupils dilated slightly, sharply.
The boundless terror that had gripped her mind was instantly replaced by overwhelming shock.
"S-Su... Brother Su Yu?!"
she cried out silently in her mind.
Su Yu's gaze flickered with a brief pause of surprise.
He clearly hadn't expected Rin's instincts to be quite this terrifying—sharp enough to see straight through even Rita's prized disguise magic.
But his shamelessness—thick enough to rival a city wall—reacted with lightning speed.
He instantly raised a finger to his lips, right over the mask, giving Rin a deadly serious "shh" gesture.
Then, in a heartbeat, he switched back to "Jiahao's" punchably obnoxious voice-changer tone, and, turning toward the stream's camera with a nose-in-the-air sneer, announced loudly:
"Yo~ where'd this lost little scrub come from? Get out of the way—you're blocking your lordship's unstoppable record run in this dump."
The humanoid elite monster, enraged by the arrogant tone, roared and charged again, its long blade raised high, brimming with killing intent.
Facing such a fearsome opponent, Su Yu didn't even draw the weapon on his back.
He didn't even bother to look the monster in the eye—he just walked straight toward it.
His steps were breezy, and he even bobbed his head to the beat of the cheesy DJ track blasting from the speaker at his waist, right on rhythm.
Just as the monster's blade whistled down—!
Su Yu snapped his hand up.
Before the stunned, speechless eyes of every viewer and Rin herself, he caught the killing blow bare-handed!
"Clang!"
A shockwave rolled outward.
"Too slow."
Su Yu let out a scornful chuckle.
"Your moves are three beats slower than the old lady who does tai chi downstairs from my place every morning. That's it? And you call yourself an elite monster?"
He tossed off the taunt and casually swung his right fist.
The punch looked featherlight, not even stirring a whisper of wind.
And yet—BOOM! A thunderous roar!
It was as if the punch had punched straight through the System's underlying code, triggering the theoretical-only [Absolute Critical] full-screen effect!
Blinding white light swallowed the alley.
The elite monster that had just driven Rin to the brink, so arrogant a moment ago, didn't even manage a scream before dissolving into a golden stream of data that shot skyward and vanished without a trace.
As the data stream scattered, glittering gold coins and materials burst across the ground.
And above the pile of loot floated, quietly, a rare weapon radiating a soft pink glow.
It was the elite monster's drop—[Sakura Blossom].
After a moment of dead silence, the stream erupted like a volcano!
[Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap!]
[A rare monster first-kill?! And it dropped the five-star weapon, Sakura Blossom!]
[Old Honkai Impact 3rd players are in tears! Isn't that Yae Sakura's signature weapon?!]
The blade was no stranger to the veteran players watching.
But in Ordinal Scale, its stats and traits had changed dramatically.
The blade came with an active skill, "Cherry Blossom: Scatter"—a charged iaido draw strike.
Every so often, its iaido strike could deal massive burst damage, and the longer the blade was charged before sheathing, the greater the damage bonus!
On top of that, it carried a built-in permanent visual effect—"cherry blossoms falling, time flowing"—an absolute flex weapon if there ever was one.
After all, the server had barely been open, and most players were still grinding it out with low-level Zombies around the newbie village.
Newbies at Rin's level were still stuck using the junky 3-star starter gear the System handed out.
Even the top-ranked grind gods, who'd formed parties and been no-lifing it since launch, barely had a handful of five-star weapons among them.
That kind of ridiculous luck combined with that kind of terrifying skill? Truly nobody could compete.
Just as the viewers, gritting their teeth in frustration, flooded the screen with danmaku—
"This guy flexing again"
"Jiahao's definitely running invincibility and drop-rate hacks"
"With a five-star weapon in hand, this bastard's about to get even more insufferable"—right as all that was scrolling by—
Su Yu lazily bent down and picked up the radiant blade.
He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, looking it up and down, then clicked his tongue in disdain.
"What kind of tacky design is this? So girly, and pink of all colors. Ugly. Hideous!"
With that, he tossed the priceless blade to Rin, still sitting on the ground, as casually as if he were throwing out garbage.
Rin fumbled and caught it in a panic.
[Ding! System notice: five-star weapon "Sakura Blossom" successfully bound.]
The next instant, the beat-up standard-issue katana in her hands flashed with light and transformed into Sakura Blossom's sleek, elegant form.
Rin sat there dumbly, hugging the blade to her chest, and looked up at Jiahao's retreating back—a figure so confident it seemed he could shoulder the sky itself if it fell.
There wasn't a shred of fear in him, not a hint of hesitation—he hadn't even treated the fight against the elite monster as anything worth taking seriously.
It was as though he'd casually stepped on a bug by the roadside.
That untouchable "absolute confidence" radiating off Jiahao pierced, like a blinding shaft of light, straight through the years-long shadow clouding Rin's heart.
That was exactly what she'd always lacked most—and wanted most.
She suddenly wondered: if she could stay near this person, absorb even a fraction of that fearless conviction, could she finally shake off the shadow of her past, grip her blade tight, and protect Sakura for real?
Just as Jiahao dramatically dusted off his hands, turned, and waved goodbye, ready to make a cool exit—
Rin found courage from somewhere and called out to his retreating back: "Wait, please! Can... can I join your party?!"
Jiahao stopped in his tracks.
The stream's danmaku went dead silent, and for a second the air itself seemed to freeze.
He didn't brush her off with some cold "you're not worthy" line like a typical aloof big-shot from a novel, nor did he play along and go for the whole domineering-CEO-falls-in-love routine.
He turned slowly, hands still tucked in his hoodie pockets, and let out a heavy sigh through his mask.
The next moment, a red full-screen alert popped up in Rin's AR view:
[Ding! Warning! The server's most extremely dangerous individual, top-ranked player "Jiahao"—has sent you a friend request!]
Jiahao raised a finger and pushed up the smiley mask on his face.
In a tone dripping with punchable smugness, he spoke to Rin—and to the camera broadcasting live to the entire network above her head:
"Little sis, I've always known this overflowing charm of mine is just too handsome to contain."
"But hey, don't go falling too hard for your bro here~"
After delivering that toe-curling line, he snapped his fingers with a flourish.
Accompanied by a "whoosh" electronic sound effect from the speaker at his waist, he activated a movement skill, his whole body dissolving into an afterimage that vanished into the sunlight at the far end of the alley.
All that remained in the alley were the scattered coins from the drop, still uncollected.
And Rin, clutching Sakura Blossom, hair completely windblown and thoughts in total disarray.
____
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