Regarding the question of whether one thousand lives are enough to beat Honkai Impact 3rd.

"They're forcing me into it. I've crashed hundreds of times in the virtual pod, and the higher-ups still dare to send me. It just shows that the current situation, with Honkai Impact 3rd as a new military indicator, has directly filtered out most pilots."

The amount of information conveyed in that statement made it difficult not to question her professional competence, but Lin Xinchan seemed completely oblivious to this, and began to complain:

"My parents made me join the army so that I could make a living and not have to worry about life in the future. They probably never imagined that their daughter would fly a plane."

The little girl sighed as she recalled the miserable life she had endured over the past few months:

"Let's not even talk about them. When I first crashed in the virtual scenario, I questioned my life. Why was I pulled in to be a conscript and fly this thing?"

"Our instructors initially said that dying a few times inside would help us learn quickly, but I didn't actually complete a virtual mission until after my thirty-eighth crash."

"Virtual cabins are really great. Without them, I doubt I would ever die that many times in my life, and learning to fly a plane would be an impossible task."

Lin Xinchan's personality remained as talkative as ever; she continued to ramble on:

"It's roughly the same concept as Xiaohua's recruit camp. Our logistics department also needs to undergo a month of unified training. Anyway, I suffered a lot in the process before I finally graduated."

“At first, I thought I would be nervous when I sent people to do tasks, but after sending them once or twice, I found that it was no different from my dad’s old job.”

"It's all about picking up and dropping off people, just with different methods."

Shi Yu Qiluo tugged at Fu Hua's sleeve, sensing something was amiss, and whispered:

"What did her dad do before?"

Fu Hua was silent for a moment. She glanced at the world outside the window, where the clouds seemed within reach, and replied softly:

“The technology level in our area is very backward. Xin Chan’s father… is a taxi driver.”

Carol touched her arm and felt a little cold.

Shigure Kira checked the seatbelt and the parachute that came with the seat, and only felt slightly relieved after confirming that everything was in order.

As Captain Himeko was right, there's no shortage of unexpected events when you go out on missions.

She carefully observed Lin Xinchan's fluid and natural movements, feeling as if she were facing a formidable enemy.

Half an hour later, in St. Vincent's Bay, in southern Australia.

The pitch-black armed helicopter landed precisely in the area most vulnerable to the Honkai energy. The sound of its wings cutting through the air gradually diminished, and the reserve compartment automatically opened several intelligent flight instruments responsible for reconnaissance, heading towards the city.

The three of them walked out of the cabin and onto the ground without any serious injury.

This down-to-earth feeling and the uneventful journey made the group re-evaluate each other's professional abilities.

Even though her talkativeness is indeed very similar to that of a taxi driver, making the style somewhat off, Lin Xinchan's hundreds of deaths in the virtual pod still gave her excellent driving skills.

Lin Xinchan shouted to Fu Hua, who was standing on the ground and about to head to the city:

"Xiao Hua, be careful."

"Remember to have dinner with me when you come back!"

Immediately after Fu Hua nodded in affirmation, the armed helicopter streaked across the sky and disappeared into the black dot within a minute, completely vanishing from sight.

"Regardless of whether or not anything unusual is found, we must return within three days."

"Given the current shortage of personnel, you must face all the unknowns you encounter with the mindset that your own safety is more important than the mission itself."

They silently recited Himeko's words and looked in the direction of their mission objective.

St. Peter's Basilica.

91. Indescribable, the breath inside the church.

Montefiore Hill, next to a bronze statue surrounded by flowerbeds.

The three-person team stayed here.

Their goggles automatically switched to multi-functional binoculars.

Looking in the direction the bronze statue is gazing, you can see the urban public land surrounding the inner city, the two spires of the magnificent St. Peter's Basilica, the elegant Torrens River, and the aerial silhouettes of the city's tall buildings.

This view was once known to local residents as "Wright's View".

Having heard that Wright was the decision-maker who chose to build the city on this land, people erected a bronze statue here to commemorate him.

Standing here at dusk, with the lights twinkling, it's easy to understand Wright's thoughts.

But now, that once prosperous, stable, and vibrant era has been shattered under the trampling of decay.

Today, Adelaide is far removed from the utopian dream we once had, and traces of those dreams can only be found in the historical relics that still allow us to look back.

The flowerbeds, neglected for months, were overgrown with weeds, and the bronze statue was covered in dust, but the outline of its eyes remained unchanged.

Against the backdrop of a clear blue sky and white clouds, the distant scenery remained perfectly intact, leaving the group looking at each other in astonishment.

Aside from soldiers with adequate Honkai skills, the only other resources the authorities can utilize are satellite searches and inspections by mechanized units.

Therefore, Adelaide was a place that the troops had never personally visited before.

After weathering the onslaught of those waves of Honkai Beasts, it's only natural that the higher-ups would want to gradually confirm whether there are any plots of land in Australia, where the Honkai calamity wasn't too severe, that could be brought back under government control.

The reason for going to St. Peter's Basilica is that it contains an official Honkai energy detector, whose data can accurately calculate for the logistics department whether Adelaide has the real environment for ordinary people to survive.

Essentially, this is something that can be understood simply by using the Honkai energy sensors that come with the mechanical units.

However, several inexplicable cases of Honkai energy tidal recurrence have recently occurred in Australia. Several cities that were previously considered unaffected have inexplicably experienced large-scale Honkai energy tidal flows, resulting in the direct deaths of tens of thousands of people and thousands contracting Honkai disease.

In today's world, with a rapidly declining population, such events truly need to be taken seriously.

If the Honkai consciousness can still control regional Honkai energy after controlling the Honkai outbreak, then the world's格局 (geju, a term referring to the overall situation or structure) will undoubtedly be completely reversed.

These areas, which have experienced collapse, will become off-limits to most of humanity.

The world map would then be splattered with vast swaths of black ink, turning into an unrecoverable territory.

However, after experiencing the feint attack of the previous collapse, the Moth Chaser has come to understand that this calamity, which has been locked in a stalemate with humanity for a century, possesses its own consciousness.

If the previous assessment is correct, then there is no need to use multiple Honkai outbreaks to weaken the population; one can simply control the Honkai energy to spread and infect indefinitely.

Therefore, they concluded that the backflow of Honkai energy is a spontaneous phenomenon of Honkai energy and is most likely unrelated to Honkai consciousness.

However, this spontaneous phenomenon still makes the region's recycling plan difficult to implement.

The higher-ups believed that to truly understand whether a backflow event would occur, they needed to have all the Honkai energy changes in this region after the third Honkai outbreak to make a real determination. This greatly slowed down the official actions and pace, and also led to the creation of Fu Hua and others' mission.

Shigure Kira removed her goggles and said to the two people beside her:

"It still seems there are no Honkai Beasts. How strange."

Fu Hua tapped the dial, projecting a corresponding Honkai energy detection map. After a moment's thought, she said:

"Not only that, the concentration of Honkai energy in the vicinity is also very low."

"This is very abnormal."

Carol glanced at the nearly intact buildings in the distance and said softly:

“Adelaide is almost indistinguishable from the images transmitted from earlier satellite images.”

"It's almost as if... the Honkai never happened."

Fu Hua reached out her fingertip and picked up a speck of black ash from the ground. She could sense with her sword heart that this was a particle formed from Honkai energy and human remains.

This is nothing to be surprised about. Adelaide was among the first cities to lose contact with the outside world, and its collapse was inevitable.

And since it has suffered a collapse, it is only natural to have these common black and gray things around.

The terrifying scene of black and gray resonating with the Honkai energy vortex and merging into the atmosphere and clouds a few months ago has vanished without a trace as the Honkai energy fluctuations have disappeared.

Then, large swaths of black ash fell like rain, covering the land once dominated by humankind.

These black and gray things are now everywhere, just like weeds in the wilderness. Even though they knew their origin, the people were no longer moved by them.

Fu Hua observed the values ​​transmitted by the detector and said:

"Honkai did indeed occur here, but apart from a few suicide soldiers, we haven't encountered a single Honkai Beast along the way, which is really illogical."

Carol said softly:

"Let's move forward. If there were powerful Honkai Beasts ahead, the buildings wouldn't be in such a complete state."

In fact, before they came in person, they all thought that the large Honkai energy detector, located a hundred meters below the church's surface, still had a chance of surviving, but the chances of St. Peter's Basilica not becoming a ruin were really small.

But the reality is that the world before us, apart from being quiet and deserted, seems to have preserved the grand glory of the civilized era.

Victoria Square, the Natural History Museum, the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and even the University of Adelaide—these areas have all been preserved in their best condition.

All these signs make it seem as if the biennial Adelaide International Arts Festival could still be held here immediately, with the jubilant noise of people piercing through the high clouds, as if the utopia that Wright longed for was right before our eyes.

The group remained silent and chose to move forward in quiet.

Although Himeko said that when facing the unknown, one should put one's own life first, retreating back to headquarters when faced with an empty city full of suicide soldiers is something a qualified soldier would never do.

The tiny nanomechanical insects flew silently ahead of the group and entered St. Peter's Basilica first.

These nanobots are equipped with standard Honkai energy detection systems and visual transmission capabilities, allowing the people hanging behind them to peek into the church's interior facilities and specific scenes.

Honkai energy... How strange?

Fu Hua noticed the subtle fluctuations in the Honkai energy index and frowned.

Shiyu Qiluo glanced at the church door, which she had pushed open halfway. She could clearly see the scene inside through the crack, and the nanobots also provided a clear view. But at that moment, she only felt that it was incredibly deep and devouring.

The girl's originally simple and neat outfit underwent a transformation, with the armor on her arm extending into a graceful, winding blade resembling a musical note. She gripped the weapon in her backhand, clearly ready for battle.

This is the fully activated combat state of the general-purpose Honkai combat armor. In this mode, the armor will automatically breathe the Honkai energy from the surrounding environment and the Honkai energy supply chain within its body, thereby conducting a large-scale cycle to strengthen the entire torso and basic defense.

However, being in this mode all the time will put a huge burden on the body, and the requirements for Honkai energy literacy will become more demanding.

Carol and Shigure Kira both possess excellent Honkai energy literacy, which, converted to modern algorithms, would place them at the level of an A-rank Valkyrie.

In this respect, Himeko is actually inferior to the two, which is the core reason why she was willing to let the two join and give them the most advanced armor.

Fu Hua's Honkai energy adaptability is superior, and she is also the one who can maintain armor for the longest time among the three.

However, if the Taixu Sword Qi and armor are used together to enhance the body, the combat time will be greatly reduced.

The Mirror Sword Heart technique has indeed greatly increased the upper limit and breadth of the ability to control Honkai energy, and even the precision has been instinctively improved, but when it comes to physical control, one must be extremely careful.

She did indeed control [Thousand Stars], but to achieve the perfect, normal state of [Thousand Stars] like Su Qing'an was simply wishful thinking.

Even with armor, the girl's physical capabilities are still far less forgiving than the boy's. Her only advantage lies in her excellent Honkai energy adaptability, which greatly lowers the barrier to entry for this skill.

However, since the skill [Thousand Stars] was originally designed as a short-term burst skill, learning to use it like Su Qing'an would require much more time.