Crack!
Yuki Asahi exerted a little force, shattering the shackles on his wrists, then pressed his hand against the collar around his neck.
Bang!
Yuki Asahi looked at the shattered fragments in his hand, then at the leader lying on the ground.
The leader turned his head dazedly, still reeling from the blow, and his expression shifted dramatically again.
“You… impossible! Impossible!”
“You didn’t really think something like this could hold me, did you?”
Yuki Asahi stood up, stretched his limbs, and looked down at the blond man on the ground.
“You… how can you…” the leader’s voice trembled as he kicked his legs, scooting backward on the ground.
“The Suppressor… that was the highest-level Suppressor…”
“You rely too much on external things—that piece of scrap metal, and these little toys.”
“Stop him! Stop him now!” the leader screamed hysterically.
The few surviving elite members of the Oath Society nearby, though terrified by that blow, still gritted their teeth and charged forward on command.
A burly man wreathed in flames roared as he lunged at Yuki Asahi, trying to force him back with intense heat.
Without even glancing his way, Yuki Asahi sidestepped slightly, dodging the clumsy rush.
Then his hand sliced like a blade into the flames, precisely grabbing the burly man’s throat.
“Too slow.”
Bam!
Yuki Asahi exerted force with his arm and slammed the two-hundred-pound man hard onto the ground.
The concrete floor instantly cracked, and the flames on the man’s body dissipated as if doused with cold water.
He rolled his eyes and passed out.
Other attacks followed in quick succession.
But in front of Yuki Asahi, freed from his restraints, these Espers—who would normally dominate crowds—now seemed full of openings and flaws.
His figure wove through the crowd. Every move was minimal and clean, with no wasted motion, striking vital points.
No need for Chantui’s interference, no need for the Sword of Severing Illusions.
In less than a minute, the only ones still standing on the platform were Yuki Asahi and the leader.
Step by step, Yuki Asahi approached the leader.
The sound of his footsteps on the rubble was like the Death God’s countdown.
“Don’t… don’t come any closer!” The leader pulled a specially-made Handgun from his coat and aimed it at Yuki Asahi with trembling hands. “I’m from the Oath Society…”
Slap.
Yuki Asahi casually swung his hand. The leader felt a sharp pain in his wrist, and the gun flew out of his grip.
The next second, a powerful hand clamped around his throat and lifted him into the air.
“Cough… cough…!” The leader struggled desperately, his feet kicking in the air, his face turning purple.
“You just said you’d let me sit in the best seat and watch?”
Yuki Asahi’s voice was terrifyingly calm, his golden eyes staring straight into the leader’s terrified pupils. “So have you seen clearly now?”
“Ugh… please… please…”
Yuki Asahi didn’t kill him. He flicked his wrist and threw the leader away.
The leader slammed heavily into the railing, the sound of ribs breaking clearly audible.
He then rolled to the ground, curled up in pain.
“I sympathize with your circumstances, but I don’t approve of your actions.”
Just then, a huge roar sounded from the distant sea.
Several hovercraft flying the Pacific Treaty Navy flag rushed onto the beach, and fully armed special forces soldiers flooded the island like a tide.
In the sky, several helicopters circled, their massive searchlights illuminating the entire island as bright as day.
“This is SAAC Special Action Unit! Everyone drop your weapons immediately! Get on the ground!”
The loudspeaker’s voice echoed through the night.
Yuki Asahi ignored the soldiers collecting the remaining enemies. He walked straight to a corner of the platform.
There sat a long black metal case—the weapon the Oath Society had seized from him.
He kicked open the lid.
The Sword of Severing Illusions lay inside.
The moment his fingertips touched the cold hilt, that familiar feeling of connection surged through his entire body.
Yuki Asahi gripped the hilt and slowly drew the two-handed sword.
“There are still mice that need cleaning up.”
He turned and swept his gaze toward the woods at the island’s edge.
Some Oath Society members were still hiding there, trying to escape or put up a last stand.
With a flicker of movement, Yuki Asahi vanished.
Over the next few minutes, sharp sword lights occasionally flashed through the forest.
There weren’t many screams, because the battle ended too quickly.
When the SAAC soldiers pushed to the edge of the woods, all they saw was a field of incapacitated enemies and a figure walking away, a sword in hand, his white shirt billowing in the sea breeze.
“Mr. Yuki!”
A rough voice called out.
Lao Zhang rushed over with a squad of elite soldiers. Seeing Yuki Asahi unharmed, this SAAC hard man breathed a sigh of relief.
“Glad you’re okay— otherwise I wouldn’t be able to explain it to the higher-ups.”
Lao Zhang wiped the sweat from his forehead, glanced at the carnage around him, and a flash of shock crossed his eyes.
Yuki Asahi sheathed the Sword of Severing Illusions and nodded. “Their leader is up there—still alive.”
Having worked with SAAC for over a year, he had learned some Chinese.
“Good! Leave the rest to us.” Lao Zhang waved his hand, signaling his men to go and capture the prisoner.
Just then, a nearly panicked cry came from the rescue team’s comm channel.
“This is Rescue Team One! We found… whoa, how is this possible?” on the southern beach.
“What’s going on? Did you encounter enemies?” Lao Zhang immediately pressed his earpiece and asked.
“Not enemies! It’s the diplomatic envoy! And the Metropolitan Police Department negotiation team!”
“What?”
Yuki Asahi was stunned.
He had seen that C-2 Transport crushed into scrap metal by an Emergent Body at ten thousand meters, then plunge into the deep sea.
In that situation, survival was absolutely impossible—not even a complete body could be found.
“Let’s go take a look!”
When everyone reached the beach, the scene before them made them all hold their breath.
On the white sand, more than twenty people lay neatly.
The elderly envoy, the young diplomat, the fully armed Metropolitan Police Department members…
They had no blood on them, not even their clothes were wet.
They looked as if they had just taken a nap here, their chests rising and falling gently, breathing steadily.
Not far from them on the sea surface, the wreckage of that C-2 Transport rose and fell with the waves, silently telling the horror that had occurred.
On one side, the vehicle was shattered to pieces; on the other, the passengers were completely unharmed.
Lao Zhang crouched down, checked the envoy’s heartbeat, and jerked his head up, his eyes filled with disbelief. “They’re all alive… just unconscious.”
Standing among the crowd, Yuki Asahi looked at these sleeping people and let out a breath.
The guilt in his heart eased a little.
“Was it you…”
Yuki Asahi suddenly spun around and shouted toward the vast sea and sky:
“Jiang Jian Yue!!!”
His voice carried far over the sound of the waves, but there was no reply.
“Come out! I know you’re there!”
His chest heaving violently, Yuki Asahi activated his Chantui ability without restraint.
His mental energy spread like an invisible net, instantly covering an area several kilometers in radius.
He was searching.
Searching for that specific frequency—the one that had appeared in his dreams countless times, the one with that faintly sad yet deeply warm emotional wave.
He perceived everyone’s emotions.
The soldiers’ surprise and awe, the survivors’ fear, Lao Zhang’s confusion…
But no.
In that chaotic ocean of emotions, the one color he most desired was missing.
All around him was empty, only the howling wind and the sound of waves crashing against the rocks.
Yuki Asahi gradually retracted his Emotion Perception Domain and fell into a long silence.
Was she unwilling to see him, or afraid to see him?
But when he looked at the Kunlun on the horizon, he understood why she had not appeared now.
……
Several kilometers away, at an altitude of ten thousand meters above the island.
The air warped slightly, as if a thin, invisible film was there.
Jiang Jian Yue floated in the clouds, her face pale as paper.
Her body trembled slightly. Her right hand pressed tightly against her chest.
The emptiness there almost made her faint.
“Cough…”
A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.
That over-the-horizon electromagnetic cannon shot had been impressive, but the cost was high.
It was a Personal Electromagnetic Relay Cannon—developed specifically for her by DRG, adapted to her ability to use a massive number of Light Bugs as a substitute for Heartforce.
But to pull off that impressive attack, she had accidentally spent too much—also because that “Ultimate Weapon” was a bit troublesome.
It was immune to most superpower attacks, and its powerful armaments made it hard to penetrate with standard firepower.
Even if penetrated, it needed enough kinetic energy to destroy it directly, preventing recovery.
If she had access to satellite and radar coverage on a national scale, Jiang Jian Yue might not have been able to beat that giant.
She had to rely on boosting the kinetic weapon’s parameters and try to blast it with one shot.
Originally, she had wanted to say, “Hah! Me, dodge its edge?” and face it head-on, but now she could only say, “How can you talk about performance when you can’t even see the enemy?”
Right now, she was so weak that even maintaining Invisibility was difficult.
She looked down through the clouds at the man on the beach.
At how he was manically searching for her trace with his ability.
A trace of tenderness flashed in Jiang Jian Yue’s eyes, mingled with deep helplessness.
“Idiot…”
She gently reached out her hand and traced the outline of that figure in the air across the vast distance.
Then she glanced at the Pacific Treaty fleet gathering in the distance.
The warships’ radars were frantically scanning the airspace.
Though current technology could barely detect her, if a fight broke out, she wouldn’t be able to escape unscathed in her condition.
If the Euro-African War had taught Jiang Jian Yue anything, it was that she shouldn’t underestimate a nation’s reconstruction of its conventional military in this superpower era.
As an individual soldier, she was indeed invincible against local units, but a national-level opponent had ten thousand ways to kill her.
Though her relationship with the Kingdom of Zhong wasn’t so bad that they would start shooting on sight—except for that incident with Shadow Girl, which Hattori Koji had messed up.
Let’s just say Hattori Koji’s intentions were good, but his negotiation skills were a total failure.
Still, the official Zhong stance branded her a terrorist and a war criminal against humanity.
She shouldn’t appear in front of so many people.
“Wait a little longer.”
Jiang Jian Yue withdrew her gaze, fought the dizziness, and turned to fly in the opposite direction.
“Until fewer people are paying attention to you…”
Her figure dissolved into a streak of light, disappearing into the vast night, leaving behind only a faint, almost imperceptible sigh that dissipated in the cold stratosphere.
“Hiss… but…”
Jiang Jian Yue’s startling brilliance suddenly started sparking again.