What Han Qingyu was witnessing firsthand, Wen Jifei and Liu Shiheng already took for granted: the girls of the outreach troupe were bound to be far warmer and livelier than ordinary young women in Azure.
Their duties required them to travel constantly from place to place. While officially tasked with popular science outreach, their work inevitably doubled as morale-boosting entertainment for the troops.
Thinking about it that way, when soldiers cooped up for ages in mountain forests or isolated islands laid eyes on them, how passionate and excited would they be? What kind of "popular science" would they absorb?
It was like having a gorgeous female teacher lecturing you at the podium by day and talking to you in your dreams by night. Who could possibly complain about the coursework?
So why the hell had he been born a Dice?! Wen Jifei mused that if he were Han Qingyu right now, the world of Azure would be so much sweeter.
*Patter, patter, patter.*
The three of them charged into the sparring grounds at battlefield speed. A flurry of footsteps echoed endlessly through the vast, empty space... *empty*.
"Where is everyone?!" Wen Jifei stood frozen by the side entrance and asked blankly, "Where the hell is my song and dance troupe?!"
All they saw upon arrival were Han Qingyu and Shen Yixiu on the ring, followed by Xin Yaoqiao sitting all by herself in the stands. Of the outreach girls, not a single trace remained.
"Qingzi just chased... talked them all into leaving."
Shen Yixiu answered from the sparring ring. Even through her sheet-metal armor, the wry helplessness in her voice came through loud and clear. That alone proved that even Rusty Sister found Han Qingyu utterly unfathomable and exasperating.
A look of agony crossed Wen Jifei's face. "Han Qingyu!" he roared. "Have you lost your damn mind?! Why the hell did you drive them away?!"
Looking slightly embarrassed, Han Qingyu turned his head toward him and said earnestly, "I didn't want to either, but I came up with a new combat technique that I plan to test against Rusty Sister in a moment. It's best kept secret."
"..." *Secret?* Liu Shiheng muttered inwardly, wondering if Qingzi was paranoid that the outreach troupe harbored undercover Cleansing Faction infiltrators. *Damn it all, this guy definitely won't ever have to worry about honey traps in the future.*
"Do you guys want to watch too?" Han Qingyu asked from the ring.
Wen Jifei rolled his eyes at him. "I haven't the slightest fucking interest in watching you."
Yet after saying so, he figured that since he was already here, he might as well sit down, sulking as he grumbled and gossiped alongside Liu Shiheng and He Tangtang.
Xin Yaoqiao sat alone off to the side, silent the entire time.
Her feelings right now were tangled. On one hand, she thought her mother might have been right—his mind truly held nothing but battle. On the other hand, she saw how popular he was. *Ha, thank goodness he's like this. It's so reassuring.*
Then a sudden realization struck her: *Wait, then what about me?!*
*Boom.* A collision rang out from the ring.
Shen Yixiu crossed her twin blades to parry a direct downward chop from Han Qingyu. The alloy portions of her blades instantly shattered into flying shards of metal, while the outer dead iron frames buckled under the force. The point of impact was pushed nearly to the breaking point.
*So strong!* Han Qingyu landed and examined his new straight sword with satisfaction. Sheathing it over his back, he drew out the other one and said, "Switch weapons, and let's go again."
Shen Yixiu nodded, discarded her ruined twin blades, and with a metallic *clack*, drew her custom greatsword, settling into a vigilant stance.
Here he came. Han Qingyu accelerated with astonishing speed, afterimages stretching in a straight line across the ring. Around twenty meters out, he leaped into the air, gripping the hilt with both hands as his blade cleaved downward.
Shen Yixiu raised her sword horizontally to parry—
"Huh?!"
A gasp of bewilderment escaped her, for Han Qingyu did not descend.
At that instant, the four spectators in the stands actually had the clearest view of the exchange. They saw Han Qingyu lunge before Rusty Sister, leap up to deliver a downward cleave, and then—right in mid-air, in the middle of that violent downward plunge—suddenly hover.
Yes, hover. Like a freeze-frame in a movie, yet imbued with an eerie grace.
Though it lasted only a fraction of an instant, it completely baited Rusty Sister's parry, creating a timing window. In the next breath, Han Qingyu moved again, leaning low as he hit the ground and sweeping his sword horizontally... The blade stopped right beside Rusty Sister's thigh.
Had the strike connected, Rusty Sister would have been injured on the spot.
Straightening up, Han Qingyu sheathed his weapon.
"Tsk, no wonder Qingzi said to keep it secret," He Tangtang murmured dully from the stands. He recognized that this was a lethal finishing technique.
Down on the ring, Shen Yixiu stared at Han Qingyu in disbelief. "How did you do that? You cut off your source energy surge?!"
Severing a source energy surge in a split second and restarting it just as abruptly was considered by Azure soldiers to be the absolute pinnacle of deceleration and braking. It was exceptionally difficult, fraught with the risk of injuring oneself, and a single slip that left one's source energy lagging would turn the user into a sitting duck.
"Yeah," Han Qingyu nodded.
Source energy surged like a wave: cut off, restart, cut off, restart... If this cycle could be executed smoothly and seamlessly, it meant he could achieve a degree of rapid repositioning.
Taken to the extreme, it could even be described in another way: afterimages, or phantom clones.
The faster the switch, the more tangible the illusions became.
"Too bad that even if you have eight hundred clones, you still don't have a single girl," Wen Jifei remarked wistfully from the stands, having recovered from his shock.
***
"Look, that's the area over there."
On the hillside, Xin Yaoqiao pointed toward the sealed section of Research Institute 2's former site.
In the direction she indicated, nestled between three sizable peaks, a valley had been filled with gray concrete, over which patchy weeds had begun to sprout.
The area was vastly larger than Han Qingyu had initially imagined—easily the size of six or seven football fields.
Seen from here, the price Institute 2 had paid for Ne's single visit and brief stay was truly colossal.
The entire expanse of gray concrete looked like an enormous mountain reservoir, except the surface of the water had suddenly turned to stone.
"The excavated entrance is over that way, beneath the concrete layer. I hear it's almost entirely hollowed out by now," Xin Yaoqiao added.
"And they still didn't find anything?" Han Qingyu asked.
Xin Yaoqiao shook her head. "No. At least, no major discoveries."
"Can we go take a look?"
"No, that's not allowed."
"Didn't you say there was nothing left?"
"There are still soldiers guarding it."
"Is the guard tight?" Han Qingyu asked without hesitation.
Xin Yaoqiao froze for a moment. She couldn't fathom why Han Qingyu was so eager to go there, but it was abundantly clear that he wanted to, even if it meant sneaking in.
After a moment's thought, Xin Yaoqiao said, "It's not very tight—rather loose, actually. But there are still sentries stationed there around the clock, so it's usually difficult to slip inside, unless..."
"Unless what?" Han Qingyu pressed immediately.
His fascination with the place had multiple layers. First, he wanted to see if any residual, undiscovered source energy remained, even if it was buried deep in the dirt. Second, it was because of the code name Ne, and the experiments he suspected might be tied to vitalized source energy.
After all, conducting source energy experiments on animals generally came down to two possible objectives:
First, creating source energy combat beasts.
Second, using animals to alter certain properties of source energy before extracting and refining it.
Between the two, Han Qingyu leaned toward the latter.
This was the mystery he was most interested in, most desperate to unravel, and most eager to explore. The battle in the canyon had already proven how formidable vitalized source energy was; Han Qingyu wanted to understand it, to master it.
Yet his experience in the trial grounds—where the lineage of an Azure historical hero and Starlight Azure Medal recipient could commit such atrocities—had left Han Qingyu with little trust in Azure's upper echelon.
He feared death, and he feared drawing even more eyes upon himself. He didn't dare speak of it openly, leaving him no choice but to probe on his own.
"Unless the outreach troupe rehearses a new performance to test the audience's reaction," Xin Yaoqiao explained without reservation. "When they do a test run, they invite an audience. Most of the soldiers around here go to watch. Even the guards stationed at the entrance sometimes hike up this hillside with binoculars to catch a glimpse."
Her meaning was clear: only such an occasion would provide an opportunity to slip past them.
Han Qingyu understood. Calculating his remaining time, he asked with a trace of urgency, "Will they be test-running a new show in the next few days?"
"Doesn't look like it," Xin Yaoqiao said. "They just had a test run not long ago, so they probably haven't put a new routine together yet."
"Then what should I do?"
*How should I know?* Xin Yaoqiao kept quiet.
Wen Jifei nudged his way in beside them, looked at Han Qingyu, and said slowly, "Unless, perhaps, a certain Strongest in a Decade takes the initiative to say he wants to watch—that he's dying to see them perform. And that because of time constraints, these next few days are his only chance."
"But I just offended them," Han Qingyu recalled. "When they left just now, some of them looked pretty mad."
Wen Jifei shrugged. "Then go apologize! Go coax them!"
Han Qingyu didn't answer right away. He lowered his head in silence.
Xin Yaoqiao smiled inwardly, thinking there was no way he would ever go talk to them, apologize, or coax girls. Even her mother had said he was...
Han Qingyu raised his head, looked at Wen Jifei, and asked, "How do I coax them? Teach me."
Chapter 162