With a bare wooden skewer dangling from his mouth, Hongyu twirled a pen between his fingers as he pondered how to reply to that strange imperial proclamation from Great Yan.
‘But…
writing a reply to a flyer is a little…’
After some consideration, he had ultimately decided to respond to the earlier of the two mysterious messages, the one written on that unusually textured sheet of paper.
But…
‘What the hell am I supposed to write?’
Hongyu thought about it for a moment before casually scribbling a single character onto the paper, essentially meaning [I’m in].
He then tossed the sheet into the mailbox by the back door.
Scratching his head, he spat out the empty skewer in his mouth, opened the refrigerator, and took out another stick of tanghulu.
The trash can beside his feet was already overflowing with discarded skewers, which said quite a lot about how many he had eaten.
Walking into the lounge, Hongyu lay sideways on the sofa.
A wave of exhaustion washed over his body, yet his mind refused to settle down.
He kept wondering whether his earlier speculation was actually correct.
‘Maybe…
it was all just a coincidence?’
‘Perhaps I’m simply overthinking things?’
Despite these thoughts, Hongyu eventually found himself unable to resist the sudden wave of fatigue.
He closed his eyes.
…
…
‘Where the fuck am I?’
Rubbing his eyes, Hongyu woke up inside a ruined building.
After looking around at his surroundings, he couldn’t help feeling utterly confused.
Getting to his feet, he brushed the dust from his clothes.
It was only then that he realized something else.
His outfit had completely changed.
A worn bamboo hat rested on his head, while his medium-length hair had been tied into a ponytail.
His hair was rather messy, with several loose strands falling across his handsome face.
The round, dark glasses he normally wore were nowhere to be found.
A long black robe covered his body, secured at the waist by a brown sash.
A long sword hung at his side, and a pair of soft yet sturdy cloth shoes covered his feet.
‘What the…
This thing even comes with a free costume change?’
‘Although, considering the era that announcement came from, I suppose this outfit is pretty appropriate.’
‘Couldn’t it have brought my glasses along too…?
Oh well.’
Hongyu pulled the bandages wrapped around his forearm loose and wound them around his head, covering only his eyes.
‘Now I really do look like a blind swordsman.’
Hongyu smiled.
After a brief mental search, he managed to determine the general direction of the so-called Son of Heaven of Great Yan.
But when he activated his abilities, he immediately noticed something unusual.
The restrictions imposed upon his powers during this journey through time were significantly weaker than they had been during his previous trip to the past, when he met the young Ch’en Hui-chieh.
The difference was enormous.
If he absolutely had to make a comparison, then during his previous journey, destroying a single building had required considerable effort.
This time, however…
Hongyu raised his hand toward a small mountain in the distance.
A sphere of black and crimson energy formed in his palm, repeatedly expanding and compressing as its power gathered.
Then, with a casual motion, he launched the energy sphere toward his target at tremendous speed.
BOOOOOOM!
A series of thunderous explosions shook the surrounding area.
When the dust finally settled, the entire mountain had been completely obliterated.
‘That was easy.’
‘Although I’m still nowhere near as powerful as I am in reality…
Ah, no, I mean when I’m not traveling through time.’
‘Still, this should be more than enough.’
Fortunately, he had already checked the surrounding area with his senses.
Since the current era appeared to coincide with Great Yan’s war against the gods, nobody was living on that particular mountain.
Otherwise, he might have ended up with several innocent lives on his conscience.
‘But…
a war against the gods, huh?’
‘Gods…’
‘That should mean the legendary Sui, right?’
‘No wonder the restrictions on my abilities are so much weaker this time.’
‘Could that be the reason?’
In the space of a few moments, Hongyu crossed a vast distance with several rapid bursts of movement, arriving at a battlefield that had already been devastated by fierce fighting.
There, in the distance, an enormous beast towered over the battlefield.
Its colossal body seemed to blot out the very sky as it continued its rampage.
For some inexplicable reason, Hongyu felt a strange sense of familiarity when he looked at it.
‘That giant beast…’
‘That’s Sui, isn’t it?’
‘How strange…’
‘It looks…
kind of familiar.’
Hongyu pinched his chin between his thumb and index finger, carefully studying the enormous creature known as Sui.
He tried to figure out where that inexplicable feeling of familiarity was coming from.
‘Come to think of it…’
‘Before I transmigrated into the world of Arknights, didn’t some lore theorists back in my previous life suggest that Sui might actually be part of some project left behind by the Previous Civilization?’
‘Don’t tell me…’
‘Could I have lost my memories?’
‘What if I actually transmigrated into the Previous Civilization and ended up getting frozen into a human popsicle, just like the Doctor?’
‘Nah, that’s ridiculous.’
‘For starters, nobody dug me out of a coffin.’
‘And more importantly, I don’t even have the slightest memory of what the Doctor looks like.
How could I possibly be someone from the Previous Civilization?’
‘I really should stop making up nonsense to fool myself.’
‘My imagination isn’t even convincing enough to trick Aak into coming to my general store to buy medicinal ingredients.’
“Hey!
You there, wandering swordsman!
This is a battlefield!
Get out of here!”
A shout suddenly came from behind him.
Someone was warning him to leave the dangerous area.
Hongyu turned toward the voice and saw a soldier wearing an old-fashioned suit of armor.
He raised his index finger and pointed at himself, silently asking whether the soldier was talking to him.
The soldier hurried over, grabbed Hongyu by the arm, and began dragging him away from Sui.
Hongyu still couldn’t help asking, “Were you talking to me just now?”
The soldier was becoming increasingly impatient, but he continued urging Hongyu to leave.
Seeing this, Hongyu maintained his smile and spoke again.
“Brother, if I’m not mistaken…
that imperial announcement issued by the Son of Heaven of Great Yan didn’t specify any deadline for joining, did it?”
Hongyu said this with the same smile that everyone else seemed to find irritatingly punchable.
“Haaah…”
The soldier let out a long sigh.
“You really ought to leave this place.
Listen, two days ago, there were still plenty of people who believed in that imperial call to arms.
They thought they could contribute something to the campaign against the gods and earn themselves fame and fortune in the process…”
The soldier lowered his voice, almost as though he were giving Hongyu one final warning.
“But the moment the battle against Sui began, those people all died.
Every last one of them.”
“Since then, nobody else has come to answer His Majesty’s proclamation…”
“Haaah…
We’ve been fighting for so long, but I still haven’t seen anything capable of injuring that monster.”
“To be perfectly frank, I don’t even think this is a battle we can win so easily.”
The soldier’s grip on Hongyu’s arm gradually tightened.
It was obvious how deeply the situation was affecting him.
“So stop trying to throw your life away.
Leave the battlefield to us soldiers.”
“We’re soldiers.
Our duty is to protect the people of this country, especially people like you…”
The soldier glanced at Hongyu’s eyes, which were completely covered by bandages.
His meaning couldn’t have been more obvious.
“Just hurry up and leave.
I’ll take you to the military camp over there.
At least you’ll be safer there.”
‘Wait a minute…’
‘Does he think I’m some unfortunate blind guy who got separated from a group of refugees, wandered off, and ended up lost here with nobody to look after me?’
Realizing that the soldier had apparently misunderstood something, Hongyu made no immediate attempt to explain himself.
Instead, he asked curiously, “If you can’t even put a scratch on that monster, what difference does it make whether you stay here or not?”
“Why don’t you run away?”
“Run?
Where exactly am I supposed to run?”
The soldier continued pulling Hongyu along.
“If I run away, then the other soldiers have just as much right to run away.”
He suddenly paused.
“And if all of us run away, who’s going to protect this country?”
“Even if that monster is almost impossible to defeat…”
Before he could finish speaking, the earth suddenly began shaking violently beneath their feet.
The tremors were so powerful that the soldier nearly lost his balance.
In the distance, Sui was facing the combined assault of Great Yan’s army and its Celestial Masters.
In response, the colossal beast had summoned an enormous field of lightning, unleashing countless thunderbolts across the battlefield.
Several particularly terrifying bolts were now descending directly toward Hongyu and the soldier.
The soldier’s face turned deathly pale.
Faced with such overwhelming power, he could do nothing but resign himself to his fate.
He closed his eyes, preparing for the end.
But just then, a calm, almost carefree voice reached his ears.
“Almost impossible to defeat?”
“That’s only because it hasn’t met me yet.”
“I certainly don’t think that Sui is particularly difficult to beat.”
The soldier opened his eyes, only to witness a scene so astonishing that it left him utterly speechless.
The wandering swordsman standing before him—the very person he had assumed was blind—had raised his right hand, extending his index and middle fingers.
A bolt of lightning powerful enough to obliterate an entire city had come to a complete halt, hovering just a few millimeters from his outstretched fingers.
And the man responsible for this miraculous feat wore nothing more than a carefree, almost mocking smile.
Hongyu casually tilted his fingers upward, turned his palm forward, and closed his hand.
Just like that, the terrifying bolt of lightning was absorbed into his palm.
With his left hand, he removed the bandages covering his eyes, revealing a pair of gray eyes glowing faintly with an eerie blue light.
Turning toward the stunned soldier, Hongyu spoke.
“What makes you so sure I’m anything like those fools who overestimated themselves?
Anyway, I’m going to sign up for that god-slaying campaign.
Can I just go find those Celestial Masters?”
The soldier didn’t respond.
Perhaps his brain was still struggling to process what he had just witnessed.
With no answer forthcoming, Hongyu simply rose into the air and flew toward Sui at astonishing speed.
At the same time, the lightning he had just absorbed began to reshape itself in his hand, transforming into a long spear.
With a flick of his arm, he hurled it straight at Sui.
BOOOOOOM!
Accompanied by a deafening thunderclap and a piercing shriek as it tore through the air, the lightning spear struck Sui’s head.
One of the enormous beast’s horns shattered instantly.
Stray arcs of electricity continued crackling around the broken stump, as though the lightning’s power had become impossible to contain.
Naturally, this astonishing scene did not escape the attention of the Celestial Masters present on the battlefield.
They turned toward the direction from which the lightning spear had come.
There, flying toward them, was a white-haired young man wearing an outrageously arrogant smile.
And he was shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Hey, everyone!
That imperial call to slay the gods hasn’t expired yet, has it?
Because I’d like to get in on the action!”
Behind him, several more bolts of lightning were already gathering, ready to strike.
“Several thousand years ago, during Great Yan’s campaign against the gods, the Grand Warden arrived on the battlefield and immediately reversed the disadvantage that Yan’s forces had suffered throughout an entire year of fighting, using lightning techniques of unprecedented power.
His mastery over lightning was so extraordinary that he single-handedly defeated Sui…”
A young Qilin woman with slightly tousled golden hair was quietly reading aloud from an ancient scroll.
Faint currents of electricity occasionally flickered through her eyes.
‘To turn the tide of the entire campaign against Sui with a single bolt of lightning…’
‘Is that the absolute pinnacle of lightning Arts?’
“Auntie, what are you reading?”
A young man carrying a sword on his back appeared outside the room, curiously peering at the scroll in her hands.
“The Celestial Master is urging you to leave for Lungmen.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.
Let’s go.”
The young woman rolled up the scroll and set it aside.
She then picked up a dark crimson cloak and draped it over her shoulders, concealing her graceful figure.
Taking her staff, she walked out of the room.
‘Will I…
ever be able to reach the same heights as the first Grand Warden of the Sui Regulator?’
‘Forget it.
Injuring Sui and turning the tide of an entire war with just one lightning strike…’
‘Even Master probably couldn’t accomplish something like that.’
‘I should focus on getting to Lungmen first.’
She quickened her pace.
For some reason, she had a feeling that this trip to Lungmen would prove immensely rewarding.