As they crossed into Gulou District, Yekase heard a low uproar, laced with distant blasts and heavy thuds, like storm surf pounding stone.

“Over there. When we get in, we look first. Both sides aren’t saints, but stances split left and right. In our world, you know the most important skill?”

“…Staying true to yourself?”

“Knowing who to be friends with.”

“Tch.”

Ling Yi clicked her tongue, a pebble tossed at still water.

Yekase got it; back in high school, even college, she thought her mechanical talent kept her lily-pure in muddy waters, and still ended up like this.

Ended up a seventeen-year-old beauty…

…uh, doesn’t sound like a bad deal?

Though her actual age hadn’t budged an inch.

The bike swung around a corner, noise rose like a wave, and the battlefield snapped into view.

Hundreds of men in black and shades, machetes and iron bars in fist, guns and gadgets powered by who-knows-what, all chopping into one writhing mass; cars and storefronts cracked like shells on a shore.

Even the sky was chaos: two jetpack-wearing men in shades traced jittery arcs under the moon, each gripping a revolver, trading furious fire—every shot wide, like meteors that never find earth.

“What are they even doing?!”

“A street brawl. I just said.”

Ling Yi stared, eyes wide, daisy-petals trembling.

The Flashblade System… might solve ten, twenty guys; push it, maybe fifty. But there were at least a hundred here.

Each one had a weapon; if every man tagged her once, she’d be broken down again and again, glass shards in a gutter.

“This… is…”

“An enemy doesn’t come knocking when no one’s around to duel you one-on-one. The world doesn’t hand out that kind of sweet luck.”

“Then!” Ling Yi bristled, fire under frost. “Doctor, how would you fight this?”

“I’d choose not to fight…”

Yekase said it calm as cold tea.

Ling Yi stared, cheeks puffed like a carp.

“I’m serious. Humans never have a time when they must fight. Especially in a mud-soup scramble like this.”

Ling Yi kept staring, storm held behind her eyes.

“Then why are we here?”

“To watch.”

“Watch?!”

Yekase shrugged, eased the bike under a raised porch, killed the engine, popped her helmet off and fit it over Ling Yi’s head. Then she sat sideways, shoulder to shoulder.

From here the street lay like a chessboard under the moon, and chin in hand, watching this riot felt lofty, outside the world’s dust.

“Aside from those two ‘outline artists’ tracing bullets in the sky, everyone else is just hacking with cold steel. Kinda dull…” Yekase pulled two packs of weird-flavor beans from the trunk and handed Ling Yi one.

“They’re actually watching a show…”

“Oh, that guy’s using Mind Energy! Look!”

“Where? Where?”

“There! By that Chevy!”

Ling Yi followed Yekase’s faint, translucent gesture. A black-clad, shade-wearing man swung a flexible sword made of linked blades, aura swelling around him till it was almost visible, a shimmering skin of pressure no one could cross within two meters.

“Mind Energy is pure will. Ten times more idealist than Flash Energy, so I don’t like researching it. Treat it like wuxia’s qi or inner force, except you can store it outside your body. Not for long, though.”

Because it’s pure will, it’s simple to use; and when it bugs, you shout twice, cue a flashback montage, and it miraculously fixes itself—so everyone uses it.

It’s like magic in that way; think cultivation epics versus classic fantasy.

The Mind Energy guy carved straight through, blade singing, mowing four or five shopfronts. Then he halted, gaze lifting to the building across the street.

“What’s up?” Ling Yi asked.

“Mind Energy doesn’t have magic’s little tricks, but it boosts the user themself—senses included. There’s a strong enemy in that building.”

Before her words finished, the building’s wall blew open with a roar, and a robot five, maybe six stories high stepped out like a mountain walking.

“Maybe that’s a bit too strong…?”

The men in black froze, then panic tore them loose; enemy and ally, all bolted screaming, like leaves whipped by a sudden gale.

“Run! We’ll get flattened!”

“Gundam?! How does the Second Boss have a Gundam?!”

“A robot isn’t a Gundam!”

“Is this really the time?!”

Yekase sprang to her feet, excitement fizzing like soda: “Didn’t expect them to have a mech! Jackpot—You asked how I’d fight? Watch.”

“Eh?! You’re going in? Then I’ll—”

“Stay invisible right here. Don’t move. Watch, and learn.” Yekase tore open her beans, tipped a handful into her mouth, and passed the rest to Ling Yi.

“Eh—eh? Doctor can fight?!”

“Not a lot. Just a little.”

“Isn’t that already a lot?!”

“It’s a lot. But if it doesn’t need me, that equals not a lot.”

Yekase drew a thin mask from inside her jacket and pressed it to her face. Something inside clicked alive.

“B-010, lightweight armor ‘Legion’.”

Her voice, run through the mask, became a chorus of several voices braided together.

Her silhouette vanished under a black hoodie; wide hood and hem hid every detail of her upper body like night-ink.

She opened her arms, stepped back, and slipped out of the Stalker’s optical camo’s reach.

Moonlight laid bare the mask’s face: a crude smile scrawled in marker, a child’s grin on a shadow.

“That looks… evil. So what can this armor do?”

“No abilities.”

“Huh?”

“I said lightweight. It compresses a garment and gives me a basic voice mod. That’s it.”

“Uh…”

Yekase dug in her pocket for fingerless gloves, put them on; dug out an earbud, tucked it in; dug out a small knife, let it breathe night.

“Doctor, your jacket really has no abilities?”

“The pockets are very deep.”

“That’s… actually handy.”

The earbud connected. Yekase’s unprocessed voice bloomed inside Ling Yi’s helmet, soft as breath.

“Mic’s on so you feel a bit more in it. Might get loud, turn the volume down—Okay. Starting the experiment.”

“Experiment? What experiment?”

“Just saying a classic line. Don’t mind it.” Yekase waved and faced the churning crowd.

“Hiss—”

She drew a long breath, like a bow pulled to full moon.

“—We go.”

She dropped from the porch edge, lowered her body, and sprinted like a fifty-meter dash into the black sea. The hoodie melted into the swarming dark; from Ling Yi’s perch, she could just catch that shadow threading waves.

Yekase barely curved as she headed for the mech, sometimes slipping sideways, sometimes vaulted cleanly, sometimes dove through an armpit’s gap, using the smallest motions to avoid all avoidable blows; when she couldn’t, she flicked her knife up to parry, feet never losing a brisk, river-quick pace. In a blink she was dozens of meters deep.

Finally, men in black noticed; the masked intruder didn’t belong to either side, a stray comet cutting their sky—

Three knives slashed almost together at her neck and back, silver rain with malice in it.

“Doc—”

Ling Yi almost shouted.

Yekase set a hand on a shoulder beside her, spun, and sent that man backward like a door swung shut.

Snick-snick! Slash!

Two screams cut and vanished in the din; even in the earbud they were only faint ripples.

Why two?

One was the shield she grabbed, taking the hit that fell; the other was one attacker from the side. The shield didn’t cover him, so she cut first from below, slicing his wrist, spring-water fast.

And after all that, Yekase didn’t pause a half-step. She used the falling man as a roadblock, twisted twice through blind spots, slid out of the pursuers’ sight, and kept moving forward.

“Doctor…”

Her movement flowed like cloud and stream, natural as weather.

With footwork like that, if the Doctor put on the Flashblade System herself… what room would Ling Yi have?

So why didn’t she wear it?

Ling Yi remembered: the mass-produced units were loopholes; the pure Flash Energy that forms the true Flashblade System can only be driven by the kind-hearted.

While Yekase pressed through the human tide, the Second Boss’s mech also carved its path, helping thin the barrier without noticing her.

Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty. Twenty…

A rough breath burst over the line, and Yekase’s steps slowed hard; she stopped.

“Hey? What’s wrong—Are you okay, Doctor?”

“I’m fine… my stamina bar hit zero. That’s all.”

So all those terrifying moves, yet her body was still the same weak-chicken baseline!

“But we’re close enough… A Mind Energy-driven mech… nice… I’ve never taken one apart.”

Ling Yi couldn’t help blurting, “You’ll dismantle it right now?! Here?!”

“If it’s parts making a machine, even a mech, I’ll strip it for you.”

“That’s such a familiar line!”

Yekase proved it wasn’t bluster: she walked up to the mech’s foot, lifted her dagger—

And slid it into the right ankle joint, the seam where two armor plates kissed.

“Fun fact: Mind Energy machines over-rely on their stand-in willpower hack. Their core structure’s usually very simple. Like ‘70s super robots. Worse than a charlatan mystic.”

Screeeeeeeee—

A tooth-aching shriek scraped the night; the whole street held its breath for a heartbeat.

Under the eyes of the remaining dozens,

The armor plate on the right foot couldn’t bear the steel’s weight; it peeled outward, spun off into the dark like a coin.

Ka-thoom!!

The whole mech lost balance and crashed, a felled mountain shaking the block.