As the Ghostfire Syndicate invaded and the Taixu Gang faced annihilation, the Taixu Gang's leader—the storyteller Su—stepped forward.
His opening shot ignited the fighting spirit of the entire Taixu Gang.
The Taixu Gang was a criminal organization, but in terms of its actual nature, it more closely resembled an enormous Azure Empyrea fan club.
Unlike other celebrity fandoms, however, Azure Empyrea had originally proved her Dao through martial prowess. Naturally, the gang members who followed her were also martial-minded people.
Crisis drew people together, and with Su leading them, the Taixu Gang members quickly united.
"Pink-Hair has spoken! Charge! Kill those animals!"
"It was one thing when we didn't have weapons, but now that we do, anyone who still refuses to fight back is a coward!"
"For the righteous and honorable Great Immortal Crimson Firmament! Grab your weapons!"
"Ghostfire Syndicate, my ass! Elites are exactly who I came to fight!"
"This is the immortal artifact I bought from the gang! Watch me annihilate them in seconds!"
A large number of heroes immediately surged toward Taixu Hospital's main entrance, forming a defensive line to intercept the Ghostfire Syndicate.
As expected of a fandom. Their ability to mobilize was truly beyond reproach.
Su, on the other hand, withdrew to the second line after firing the first shot.
"Storytelling and opera guide the people. Three great roads run through the center. In the end, good and evil both receive their due. The righteous path of the mortal world is filled with vicissitudes."
Snap!
Su closed his script. He still could not immerse himself in theatrical lines as completely as Vill-V did.
Although he had practiced for a long time, the moment he remembered that these words would send those who heard them to their deaths, he could not bring himself to speak them.
"My apologies. I am not an outstanding commander, nor can I sit comfortably inside an office and review casualty reports."
Vill-V had originally assigned Su to remain in the rear. After all, as a precious Flame-Chaser, Su was someone Vill-V did not wish to see suffer any accidents.
Yet Su still chose to come to Taixu Hospital's main entrance and fight alongside the other gang members.
Even though those Taixu Gang members were not members of Mad Hatter and had merely been recruited on a temporary basis.
Su had never believed himself superior to others.
As for Vill-V's favoritism and goodwill, Su could only apologize.
However, the Taixu Gang's combat strength clearly exceeded Su's expectations. He had originally assumed they were nothing more than a disorderly mob and could not possibly be compared to the Mad Hatter organization.
Unexpectedly, their momentum was astonishing. They formed a solid wall of firepower and drove the Ghostfire Syndicate's mechanical hounds and mechanical bosozoku away from Taixu Hospital.
And they had accomplished this without Su activating Taixu Hospital's Level Three or Level Two security systems.
Ironically, this left Su unable to intervene by activating the security systems.
Following the scent of gunpowder, Inori arrived at the main entrance as well. The moment she appeared, she noticed Su standing motionless like a statue with a controller in his hands.
"Mr. Moon, aren't you joining the battle?"
Su shook his head. "I am merely a physician and am not skilled in battle. Caring for patients is my true duty."
As he spoke, the logistics personnel carried a wounded man before Su. The man was covered in blood and barely breathing, clearly drawing fewer breaths than he released.
Su took a metal statue from his bag, and the statue automatically transformed into various pieces of medical equipment.
The Multifunctional Portable Medical Kit · Su was a soulium device developed by Vill-V.
Ordinarily, it looked exactly like Su and could even perform a number of preset movements. When medical treatment was required, it could transform into various intelligent medical instruments.
Now, it transformed into a comically oversized scalpel.
Inori watched as Mr. Moon had barely lowered the scalpel before the patient sprang to his feet.
"Huh?! It doesn't hurt anymore?! I'm healed!"
"I'm going back to fight right now! Immediately! Those sons of bitches actually beat me this badly!"
Roaring at the top of his lungs, the wounded man ran straight back to the front line.
"What kind of medical technique is this? Even the bleeding has stopped!" Inori noticed that Mr. Moon had not simply injected the patient with stimulants for convenience. Stimulants would only have caused the patient to bleed even more violently.
Su tapped a finger against the scalpel's edge, yet the razor-sharp blade failed to cut his skin. "Nanomedical robots. The Mad Hatter organization's most advanced technology."
"Treating superficial wounds is far easier than treating Honkai Sickness."
"Uh, is that so? I don't really understand the difference, but it's not like I've never been hospitalized. When I trained at St. Freya Academy, I injured my waist in a fall and had to lie in bed for an entire month. As expected of Mr. Mad Hatter's right-hand man."
"All right, I'm going to show them what I can do too!"
After saying that, Inori joined the battle as well, making the fighting even fiercer.
However, even with Inori and Su present, the Taixu Gang remained at an absolute disadvantage against the Ghostfire Syndicate's vanguard force.
The only reason the two sides appeared evenly matched was that the Taixu Gang was currently riding a surge of momentum and stopping them at any cost.
Without intervention from some other external force, however, the Taixu Gang members would soon lose heart.
Sure enough, one motorcycle had already torn through the Taixu Gang's dense interception fire and was charging straight toward the hospital entrance.
"Out of the way! Out of the way! I'm taking first place!"
The Ghostfire Syndicate rider was beside himself with excitement. As long as he broke through Taixu Hospital's main entrance and tossed in a bundle of TNT to demonstrate the true art of explosions, he could return to the Ghostfire Syndicate and collect his gambling winnings of three thousand credits.
The bosozoku saw no difficulty whatsoever. As a Ghostfire Syndicate squad captain, the fact that he had broken through the Taixu Gang members' defensive web of firepower was already enough to prove his strength.
And the only person guarding the hospital entrance was a frail-looking doctor.
However, the frail-looking doctor's next movement left him completely baffled.
Su merely placed one of his long sidelocks into his mouth and pressed his palms together.
...Om... Tathali... Om... Jakula...
As the words echoed and their rhythm rose and fell, Su's body grew increasingly light.
His five senses converged into one and dissolved into the tranquil lake of his heart.
"The Taixu Gang must truly be out of people if they've left an idiot to guard the door! Hahahaha! Watch me grind you into pieces!"
Yet in the next instant...
Ai, Mali.
The rider's vision went black, and he instantly lost all sensation, as though he had fallen into an abyss.
Where is this? Why can't I speak? Where did my huge bundle of TNT go?
Yet he did not know that his body had already been flung to the ground before he could even light the TNT's fuse.
Su had stripped away his five senses.
"Bodhi's Admonition."
This was the name of the signet art Su had performed, and it was also one of the applications of the Heart Lake deduced by Occultist.
Although Vill-V did not know Azure Empyrea's Edge of Taixuan, that did not prevent Occultist from making a few simple deductions based on details from Honkai's storyline.
Through guidance provided by certain admonitions, one could destabilize another person's five senses.
What the heart lake connected to were precisely the five human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
Although ordinary people possessed no heart lake, their senses could still be shaken by another person's overwhelmingly powerful heart lake.
However, this was not Azure Empyrea's universally accessible Sword Heart Mantra, nor was it a true heart lake opened through Honkai energy.
The greatest flaw of Bodhi's Admonition was that Vill-V herself could not use it. Only warriors with tremendously powerful mental strength could perform it.
And as it happened, even in the Previous Era, there were very few who could compare to Su in mental strength.
Aside from Aponia, he was the most powerful psychic warrior of all.