Not long after the Chariot-class Honkai Beast dissolved into a shower of gold—
After Su Yu left, Rin went live again.
She switched off her stream's voice mic and hid the danmaku overlay in the corner of the screen.
The pink-haired girl gripped the cold-gleaming Sakura Blossom and plunged straight into the abandoned industrial district on the edge of Arc City.
It was a high-density monster spawn zone the System had flagged—commonly nicknamed the "meat grinder" for leveling.
The million-odd viewers who'd tuned in expecting a laugh found themselves glued to their screens instead, watching a two-hour masterclass in visual dissection.
No wasted footwork, no flashy button-mashing combos.
Among the rusted pipes of the derelict factory, three Level 18 scythe-wielding Zombies closed in, flanking her in a triangle.
A scythe sliced toward Rin's neck with a whistle of parted air.
Rin's feet stayed rooted, knees bending slightly. The falling blade reflected in her eyes.
[Mikiri Counter.]
In the split second before the scythe grazed her hair, she slid sideways, a wash of white light wrapping her body—the telltale flash of invincibility frames.
[Deflect.]
The Zombie swung its blade in a backhand arc.
Rin gripped the sheath with both hands and drove it upward to meet the blade.
The clash of metal rang out, shaking rust loose from the pipes overhead.
The Zombie's poise bar shattered, a red glow blooming across its chest.
Her thumb flicked the guard free.
A streak of pink light tore through the gloom of the factory.
Cherry blossom petals scattered through the data-stream, and all three heads hit the ground at once, bursting into a rain of gold coins.
She hadn't thought through a single step of that combo.
The danmaku in her stream flipped from mocking jeers to a mass keyboard meltdown.
The tide turned instantly, rolling right over the earlier insults and leaving the chat carpeted with cyber-kneeling.
[Holy—sorry, I admit I was talking too loud earlier. Is that even humanly possible?]
[Mikiri Counter into a Deflect, zero-frame startup! Did she code that straight into her DNA?]
[Turns out the clown was me all along. I was just telling her to hand over her gear, and now all I want to know is—does the streamer need a pet dangling off her leg? The kind that can feed itself and scream "666"!]
[That iaido slash just gave me a brain orgasm. Mom's asking why I'm watching the stream on my knees!]
[Haters, speak up! Come out and take a walk! What kind of trophy wife clears a mob solo without taking a hit?]
The level counter in the corner of the screen shot up like it had a rocket booster strapped to it.
Lv. 12, Lv. 15, Lv. 19.
The experience bar surged visibly, climbing before their eyes.
Thanks to the absurd bonus experience from farming above her level, Rin's character had, in a single morning, all but caught up to the main pack of beta testers who'd been grinding for a full day and night.
"Ching."
The blade slid back into its sheath.
The last Zombie dissolved into data fragments.
Rin stood amid a mountain of loot, chest heaving.
She opened her System inventory, stuffed with enhancement materials of every color and gleaming piles of virtual currency.
She raised her hand and looked at her own palm.
No sweat. No trembling.
The little girl who once couldn't even grip a sword hilt without being dragged into the Abyss by bloody memories—she'd left that girl behind in that crumbling abandoned building.
Rin exhaled a heavy breath and tapped open the floating System panel.
Her finger hovered over the friends list.
The list was empty except for one lonely black smiley-face avatar pinned at the top. ID: [Jiahao].
Her gaze lingered on that avatar.
Those words spoken under the moonlight, those eyes that had cut straight through her gloom, that arrogant retreating back—they played through her mind one after another.
The corners of Rin's mouth curved up without her permission.
Make money. Buy her sister a gift. Pay the rent.
Those had truly been Rin's original goals.
But now she had a new one too.
Not relying on charity. Not hiding under someone's wing.
She would carve her own path with the blade in her hand, and catch up to that "Master" who ran his mouth like a runaway train yet had tossed her a legendary weapon without a second thought.
After exiting the friends list, Rin opened her chat window with Carole.
[Carole, that guild invite you mentioned yesterday—does it still stand?]
[Please let me join your party. Let's go for the first clear on Day Three's high-difficulty dungeon together.]
She hit send.
———
miHoYo Studio, the Director's Office.
The blinds were drawn, shutting out the daylight outside.
Kiana Kaslana was sunk deep into a plush bean bag chair.
Her left hand clutched a bag of tomato-flavored chips; her right held a phone mounted on a gimbal stabilizer.
The phone's camera was aimed at the man seated behind the desk.
Su Yu.
He'd already changed into the standard uniform that had earned him the title of "public enemy of the entire internet":
A baggy black hoodie, and over his face, that black mask printed with an unsettling smiley face.
He was fussing with the loose strands of hair over his forehead in the mirror, trying to make himself look even more punchable.
"Crunch."
Kiana bit down on a chip and rolled her eyes so hard you could practically see the back of her skull.
She dropped the phone gimbal onto the coffee table and brushed the seasoning dust off her hands.
"Su Yu, did your brain circuits get soaked and swollen in the Sea of Quanta?"
Kiana sighed, her tone dripping with despair for the state of the world.
"You're the top producer who developed groundbreaking AR technology, the GM holding the core code in his hands, and in broad daylight you're playing dress-up as some attention-seeking clown named Jiahao, fighting ordinary players over mobs and rankings?"
"What is this, some kind of life experience tour? Or are you just bored of being invincible, so you went to blow up the fish pond in the newbie village for fun?"
Su Yu stopped what he was doing.
He spun his chair around and, even behind the mask, raised an eyebrow, his eyes brimming with mischief:
"Is that really how you see me? Some boring guy who'd give up sleep just to blow up fish?"
Kiana stared at him with total conviction, nodding like a bobblehead:
"Yeah! I mean, you've got a rap sheet a mile long. What lousy thing wouldn't you do to milk players' tears and sell those heartbreak storylines of yours?"
Su Yu chuckled softly. "That was for your sake too, Kiana."
He deliberately dropped his voice low, laced with a mock-sincere tenderness.
Kiana's face stayed flat as she grabbed a throw pillow and hurled it at his face.
"Get a new line, big-shot writer. You've been using that one since Honkai Impact 3rd. My ears have calluses."
Su Yu tilted his head, dodging the pillow.
The mischief drained from his eyes.
His spine straightened, and in an instant his whole presence shifted from a cavalier playboy to a player who commanded the whole board.
"Let's talk business."
"What do you think the online consensus is right now—among Arc City's five thousand beta testers, and the armchair spectators too—about the ID Jiahao?"
Kiana grabbed the chip bag again and rolled her eyes. "What else could it be? They'd love to buy a plane ticket, fly to your place, crawl through the internet cable, and stab you. Your talent for pulling hatred is basically a landslide against human civilization."
"But seriously though." She took another chip. "Why are you actually blowing up the fish pond?"
"In game operations, this is called manufacturing a sense of crisis."
Su Yu explained patiently.
"When players discover a lone wolf who not only crushes everyone but rides on top of their heads mocking them without shame, a player base that was once scattered sand suddenly finds unprecedented unity—all because of a common enemy."
"Hatred is a stronger driving force than love."
"To take down me, their server's public enemy, they'll go crazy grinding mobs, leveling up, studying tactics."
"And as the producer, I naturally get to collect the most extreme, the most authentic human response data throughout the process—preparation for the official launch."
Kiana eyed the man in front of her with deep suspicion, feeling like none of it added up:
"If all you wanted was a villain to pressure the whole server, why not just grab some internal tester, or write a powerful AI script? Why do it yourself—and why act it out so... into it?"
Su Yu's gaze passed through the floor-to-ceiling window, sweeping over the bustling city of Arc City below.
"You're right. Actually, this is just the surface. That's not my real goal."
He turned, looking Kiana straight in the eye.
"Did you know? Hatred, as an emotion, strips people of reason far more easily than love does—and it's far better at driving massive crowds to act as one."
Kiana stopped chewing.
She sensed the weight behind his words.
"There are only two and a half months left before that disaster arrives."
Su Yu's voice dropped low, like distant thunder before a storm.
"I'm doing everything I can to play a vain, wildly arrogant Jiahao, farming the whole server's emotional investment like crazy during the beta."
"So that by the time the full launch comes, I'll have become the absolute mortal enemy everyone wants to hunt down, the one they'd throw everything they have at."
But what good would that do? Kiana still didn't understand.
Su Yu stood and walked to the massive holographic sandbox table.
It projected a topographic map of Arc City.
"When the Honkai countdown has just one week left,"
Su Yu's finger traced the border of Arc City and pointed to another safe city at the edge of the sandbox.
"I'll release a server-wide announcement, using 'Jiahao appears in City B, flaunting the server's one and only ultimate artifact, taunting everyone' as the juiciest bait."
"I'll mock them as cowards, provoke the bloodthirsty guild leaders, and taunt the millions of players I've been stepping on."
Su Yu turned his head to look at Kiana, whose eyes had gone wide.
"I'm going to use an event dressed up as a 'server-wide cross-guild war' and a 'hunt for the server's public enemy' to lure every single one of Arc City's oblivious millions of players out of the city—without shedding a drop of blood."
"It's a mass evacuation disguised as doomsday."
"No government mobilization needed. No military force required."
"All it takes is a target for hatred. And that target—is me."
The office fell into dead silence.
Only the cold air from the AC rustled the papers.
The chip in Kiana's hand slipped and fell onto the carpet.
She stared blankly at the man standing before the sandbox, her mind running through the feasibility of this insane plan.
Turning players' rage against the reaper of doomsday, using humanity's basest instincts as an ark to save lives??
A full half-minute passed.
Kiana swallowed the breath stuck in her throat.
She raised a thumb and squeezed a single word out through gritted teeth. "Damn."
"So, do you get now why I have to play the clown?"
Su Yu walked back to his desk.
"To make sure my pull at launch can move millions, the hatred stacked on me needs to keep growing exponentially. It can't stay confined to the five thousand beta testers—I need every armchair spectator across the whole internet grinding their teeth at me too."
He tugged at the edge of his mask, his eyes sliding back into that flippant glint.
"Camera's set. Time for me to start my incantation."
Kiana grabbed the gimbal and hit record.
The red indicator light blinked on.
Before the camera, the self-styled king of arrogance named Jiahao had arrived.
"Hellooo, all you keyboard warriors hiding behind your screens."
Su Yu's voice, run through a voice changer, carried that drawn-out, arrogant lilt.
He propped his chin on one hand and waggled a finger at the camera, side to side.
"I just glanced at the forums and saw a bunch of so-called righteous warriors ganging up on some little girl, all righteous fury. Made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt!"
"It's just some five-star piece of junk weapon. I've got a warehouse full of flashy garbage like that. So what if I tossed it to her to use as kindling?"
He suddenly leaned in close to the camera, eyes brimming with arrogance.
"You don't actually think that some random nobody, picking up gear I threw away, could challenge my position as the server's number one, do you?"
"No way, right? No way? These days, does dreaming come free of charge or something?"
That was maxing out the mockery meter.
But he wasn't done.
"Also, I hear there's some high-difficulty team Abyss dungeon opening on Day Three?"
Su Yu let out a snort.
"Saw a bunch of losers on the forums whining that without a team, a lone wolf could never clear it? Such pathetic weakling talk."
He rose to his feet, spreading his arms toward the camera like a tyrant embracing the world.
"I'm putting this out there right now! Listen up, all of you!"
"Nobody in this world is good enough to party with me!"
"Only ants need to huddle together for warmth. A tiger always walks alone!"
His finger jabbed straight at the camera, as if poking into the nose of every player watching.
"That first clear is mine! If you've got the guts, come try me, you trash!"
The recording was nearing its end.
Su Yu's peripheral vision flicked toward Kiana.
He still needed one last piece—pulling Rin completely out of the eye of this online storm.
"Oh, right."
Su Yu waved a hand carelessly, as if he'd just remembered some trivial afterthought.
"I hear that streamer girl who got my sword has the nerve to say on stream that she's coming for my number one throne?"
He let loose a string of textbook villain laughter.
"Heh, ha ha ha! Little girl, you don't actually think that being a bit cute and putting on a pitiful act lets you get away with anything in this world, do you?"
"I gave you that sword purely because it was ugly! As for you?"
Su Yu's eyes turned cold.
"Women just slow down my draw speed and my leveling!"
"Want to challenge me? Fine! Don't say I never gave you a chance. Bring your sorry teammates and watch my back disappear into the dungeon!"
The tone flipped on a dime.
One moment a cold-blooded lone wolf, the next, Su Yu's inner edgelord erupted in full force.
He struck a contorted JoJo pose at the camera.
And in a Cantonese-accented drawl cringey enough to curl your toes into a three-bedroom apartment, he bellowed out a line etched into everyone's DNA:
"—I ain't never gonna lose!"
"Click."
The recording ended.
Kiana hit the stop button.
She set down the phone, staring at the theatrical man before her, the corner of her eye twitching wildly, her fists cracking as she clenched them.
"Su Yu. I swear, if I didn't know your real plan, I'd shove this phone up your nose right now."
Three minutes later.
The video, titled [Jiahao's Declaration of War Against All the Server's Trash], was pinned to the top of the official forum.
The moment it went live, the whole internet exploded.
Like tossing a depth charge into a septic tank.
Top players from every major guild, professional esports competitors, and solo players alike lost their composure en masse.
The comment section blew past a hundred thousand posts within ten minutes.
[Damn you, Jiahao! I can't take it anymore! See you all at the new dungeon, anyone who doesn't take a swing at him is a coward!!]
[A tiger walks alone, huh? I'm bringing fifty guys to teach you some manners!]
[So arrogant! This guy is unbelievably arrogant! I've never seen anyone this full of himself in my life!]
And amid this chorus of curses—
That arrogant "women just slow down my draw" declaration—straight out of the terminal-toxic-masculinity playbook—achieved exactly the effect Su Yu had planned.
The gossip fire among the onlookers got doused with a bucket of cold water.
The entire internet reached an oddly unanimous consensus in an instant.
[Nothing to see here, folks! This Jiahao is just a brain-dead edgelord with a superiority complex.]
["Women slow down my draw speed," my ass—this loser's definitely been single since birth, a total shut-in!]
[How could a girl possibly like someone this insufferably full of hot air?]
[Right! He and that Fried Tofu Puff girl are definitely squeaky clean! Because he doesn't even deserve love in the first place!]
A conspiracy-theory crisis targeting Rin—
was defused without a trace, buried under this indiscriminate wave of server-wide ridicule.
____
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