Unfilial disciple, do not ruin your master's dream of ascension and peaceful life.

The man withdrew his fist, feinted with both arms, and then launched a kick! This powerful and fierce kick was met with Ye Yinqiu leaping into the air, kicking off her sandals, and exchanging kicks with the man barefoot!

She used a technique of striking with force, seemingly exchanging kicks, but actually using the man's foot as leverage to leap up while unleashing a slashing strike! Two deep cracks appeared on the man's shoe, but no blood was drawn!

Her counterattack wasn't over yet; she followed up with another sword strike after landing! After this period of training, her slashes could now travel two meters through the air without weakening. The transparent slash struck the man from a distance, tearing his coat apart!

Ye Yinqiu straightened up, made a sword gesture, and regained her composure.

And men—

"He's quite skilled and has excellent physical abilities."

He took a sword to the chest but acted as if nothing had happened.

Through the gaps in his tattered coat, one could vaguely see that his chest appeared to be... metal? Mechanical? In any case, not a normal human body.

"You're not bad either, sir. I can sense that you don't have any clear intention to kill. What brings you here?"

Ye Yinqiu's perception of killing intent was inherited from Qian Jing; she could sense that the other party wasn't there to kill. The latter didn't reply much—he grabbed a lamppost by the roadside and easily pulled it up, more effortlessly than picking up a toothpick.

"Effort output increased by 5%."

He swung the ten-meter-high lamppost like a piece of paper, as if the momentum had vanished. Ye Yinqiu quickly dodged! But the lamppost was left with afterimages by the man's movements, and countless afterimages blocked her space to dodge left and right. She could only retreat continuously and was soon forced to a street corner with a wall behind her!

She seemed to have nowhere to retreat, but just as the man pressed closer, he suddenly lost his footing and stumbled. Looking down, he realized that his foot had somehow stepped into a drain at the edge of the sidewalk. A large section of the drain cover had been cut up, and his foot was stuck directly in the narrow drain!

It turned out that while Ye Yinqiu was retreating, she had already unleashed her slash from beneath her feet, cutting through the slabs of the ground along her path, and intentionally controlling the direction of her retreat! The man was hit for only a brief moment, but that moment was enough!

"Take this!!!"

The lamppost paused briefly as she parried the attack with her sword and then counterattacked. Thanks to Qianjing's training over the past few days, she was now able to parry and counterattack at the limit of her damage absorption! The fierce slash traveled along the lamppost and instantly reached the man's right hand; this strike was enough to sever his arm!

However, the sound of the strike was not the sound of cutting flesh, but the sound of metal clashing! This fierce blow actually only tore his glove, and what was exposed under the glove was not human skin, but a heavy mechanical structure!

"Not bad, decent combat awareness, and the ability to conduct attacks along objects. How about this?"

The man's voice remained calm and unhurried throughout.

He threw away the lamppost, his right hand deformed, his five fingers spread out like flower petals, his palm splitting and reforming from the center, the metal radius and ulna protruding from his wrist and deforming into two parallel rails, the chilling electrical hum suddenly intensifying—

Whoosh!

Just as Ye Yinqiu dodged the strange weapon's direct aim, an orange-white light shot out straight, grazed past her, and flew diagonally into the sky!

The attack missed its target and caused no damage, but the power it contained still made Ye Yinqiu frown.

She didn't need to know what an "electromagnetic cannon" was; she only needed to know that being hit by it meant certain death.

The man, however, decided not to continue fighting. His right arm reverted to its original human hand shape, and his eyes flickered in the shadow of his hat brim. He quickly reached a conclusion:

"The investigation is complete. The threat level is low, but the evolutionary potential is great."

"…………What are you talking about?" Ye Yinqiu knew that the shot just now was just a test, and it wasn't really aimed at her.

"We are recruiting talented individuals. If you are interested, please come with me."

"Not interested!"

"Then forget it."

The man abruptly ended the conversation, without further entanglement or attack, and simply vanished—literally vanished. His body color instantly faded, completely blending into the environment as if he had never existed.

Ye Yinqiu sheathed her sword. At this moment, the pedestrians around her seemed to wake up from a dream, exclaiming in surprise that the ground was broken, the lampposts had fallen, and there was a burnt smell in the air, causing a small commotion. She took advantage of the chaos to leave.

"...What kind of superpower does this guy have?"

Ye Yinqiu knew very little about Earth's technology, let alone the "five senses interference radio waves," "individual electromagnetic cannons," and "optical camouflage" that appeared in science fiction works. She could only have a lot of questions and wild thoughts.

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Half an hour later—

In the high-rise building of Lazarus Technology's new office building in Zhanghe High-tech Industrial Park—

In the dimly lit room, a woman lay disheveled amidst a pile of electrical wires, the buzzing wires crawling all over her body like tentacles.

A half-eaten bag of potato chips lay scattered at her feet, an unfinished Pepsi was on the dirty little table beside her, potato chip crumbs were still stuck to her belly from her bad sleep habits, and there were messy little toys in the cabinet behind her.

At this moment, she was holding up her tablet watching a live stream. On the screen, a white-haired, red-eyed anime girl was humming and playing with the Verdun Ring.

"Momotsuki-chan...so cute...hehehehehe..."

Despite being a woman of decent appearance, she emitted a disgusting laugh that perfectly fit the stereotype of a fat otaku, accompanied by strange drooling sounds.

"So cute, I'll give you a reward~~~~ Ahh, all the kids I recommend are so adorable..."

"I'm back."

Suddenly the door was kicked open, and a tall, burly man in a trench coat strode in. He was furious when he saw the woman's disheveled appearance.

"What do you mean by this? You're slacking off at work watching VTubers? Do you even deserve to be valued by the boss?"

"You went out to slack off too..." the woman muttered resentfully.

"I went to test the last ascendant in Pujiang District on your behalf, that young woman 'Ye Yinqiu' who has just appeared and hasn't yet recorded official income."

"Oh, how is she?"

"Judging solely by skill, she should be the most promising of the three. We can recruit her and have her work for the boss one day. What about the other two you tested?"

"Handsome men and beautiful women, huh? They're obviously super popular social butterflies, they can all just die."

"I'm serious!"

"To be honest, it's just so-so. It's something you and I could easily handle if we got serious... So don't bother me, I'm watching the live stream... Hehehe, Momozuki-chan is so cute~ She looks so pathetic getting beaten up~~~"

"...You're hopeless."