123: Chapter 123 Disappointment

Wei Xiaoyu's pupils suddenly contracted into pinpoints.

In that instant, she was not standing in the courtyard. She was standing in a place she had spent over a decade trying to forget.

A burning convoy. A snowy field corroded purple by abyssal magic. The sound of bone spikes piercing her mother's back as she shielded her with her body. The adjutant she had called "Uncle" for seven years standing in the distance, wearing a smile she couldn't understand. By the time her father—War Emperor Wei Potian—arrived, he was only in time to catch her mother's final words.

"Xiaoyu, don't blame your father."

She was six years old that year.

In the life that followed, she learned one thing: as long as you act arrogant enough, no one dares to bully you. As long as you hold your chin high enough, no one will see the bruises on your neck left by the grip of fear. She learned to drive away every Card Creator who tried to get close to her, learned to use her peak Rank 4 stats to crush every opponent who dared not offend the War Emperor, and learned to pretend she was afraid of nothing amidst everyone's flattery and deference.

But these disguises didn't even last half a second under the gaze of [ The World ].

A Stand is an extension of the soul. A Stand's interrogation acts directly upon the soul itself. All the cowardice she hid beneath her arrogance, all the inferiority she hid beneath her pride, were uprooted from the depths of her soul by those dark golden eyes. It was as if someone were using a red-hot iron hook to repeatedly pry open the deepest scabs on her heart, peeling them away layer by layer, revealing only pus and blood, not a single piece of intact flesh.

"Your soul—"

There was a hint of undisguised disappointment in [ The World ]'s voice.

"—is so feeble."

Plop.

A drop of water fell onto the bluestone slab.

Then a second drop. A third. Wei Xiaoyu's knees slammed onto the shattered bluestone, her hands clutching her head, her entire body curled into a ball. She was making a sound, but it wasn't crying—it was a more primitive whimpering, forced out after her throat had been locked to the limit by fear. Her face was smeared with tears and snot, and the hem of her deep purple combat suit was soaked with urine, but she couldn't feel any of it. Her mind was left with only that image, the image of her mother's back being pierced before her eyes, a scene playing on a loop countless times under the gaze of [ The World ].

"Mom—Mom—"

She couldn't even articulate those two words clearly anymore.

Wei Xiaoyu's mind had completely collapsed. She lay sprawled on the ground, her hands tightly clutching the back of her head, uttering meaningless gibberish. The arrogant genius Wei Xiaoyu from a second ago was now curled into a ball, kneeling on the bluestone, no different from any child whose spine had been crushed by fear.

Then, a tall figure rushed directly into the center of the courtyard.

"Xiaoyu!!"

Wei Tianlong scooped his niece up from the pile of rubble and shielded her in his arms. Those broad palms, cut from the same cloth as War Emperor Wei Potian's, had veins bulging at this moment. He had taken off his military jacket to wrap around Wei Xiaoyu's still-trembling shoulders. He looked up, glaring at the [ The World ] still slowly rotating in mid-air, and unleashed his peak Rank 7 magic pressure without reservation.

"Get back!!"

A Mental Power shockwave exploded from within him, forming a translucent barrier that forcibly blocked the space between Wei Xiaoyu and [ The World ]. The Stand's dark golden eyes flickered twice under the pressure of the Mental Power barrier and then slowly closed—the card's circuit had been forcibly severed by external force.

[ The World ] vanished. The purple-gold light dissipated from the courtyard.

Wei Xiaoyu was curled in Wei Tianlong's arms, still shivering, muttering gibberish that no one could understand.

Wei Tianlong shielded his niece behind him and turned around.

Su Bai had already put down his recording board. He noticed the veins bulging on Wei Tianlong's left hand, which was pressing on Wei Xiaoyu's shoulder, while his other hand was clenched into a fist, knuckles white.

Wei Tianlong stared at Su Bai for quite a while. That silence was more piercing than any roar.

"I heard from my brother before that he helped you cut down people from Tianbao Pavilion. At the time, I thought that anyone the War Emperor would personally protect must have something going for them."

His voice was hoarse and low, each word sounding as if it were ground out from between his teeth.

"Now it seems—"

He looked down at his niece, who was still shivering in his arms. Wei Xiaoyu's fingernails had dug into the flesh of her own arms, and blood was dripping down through her fingers.

"—I should have known a Rank 2 Card Creator couldn't produce anything decent."

Su Bai placed the recording board onto the card-making table.

"Mr. Wei, the Stand's will interrogation is a normal part of the activation process—"

"Normal?" Wei Tianlong laughed. The laugh was short and cold, the kind of sound someone would make if a knife were held to their throat and they said, "I'm just joking." "You call this normal? She was calling for her mom just now! Her mom has been dead for ten years! Do you have any idea what kind of thing your piece-of-trash card dug up?!"

Su Bai opened his mouth.

Wei Tianlong didn't give him a chance to speak.

With a cold face, he rejected all the remaining Mental Power of [ The World ], his tone devoid of the suppressed politeness from before, leaving only undisguised contempt.

"One minute it's heart explosions, the next it's damage feedback, then posing and screeching, then soul interrogation. This isn't card creation—this is making torture instruments! She is my niece, not your lab rat! We're done with this kind of trash card. The [ Titan Furnace Heavy Armor ] sent over by Shen Ye is strong on its own; that's real heavy armament. It uses Rank 8 rare materials as a base, is encased in Titan Alloy, and once worn, doubles defense, doubles strength, and comes with a scorching aura. No side effects, no soul interrogation, no need to strike any damn poses."

The more he spoke, the angrier he became, his voice rising.

"That's what you call something meant for people to use! You're comparing the fancy props you draw on cardboard to that kind of orthodox heavy military engineering—"

"Please wait a moment."

A voice came from the doorway of the card-making room.

Researcher Yun Zhi stood at the door. She was still wearing that cartoon cat pajama set, with a wrinkled white lab coat thrown over it, holding a temperature-controlled experimental box—it contained the nano-interface layer material she had spent the entire night formulating. There were dark circles under her eyes, even worse than yesterday, but those eyes were burning right now.

"How can you speak like that?" Her voice was slightly hoarse from staying up all night, but every word was articulated with extreme clarity. "The two-way mass-energy conversion circuit in Su Bai's card uses nano-scale formless spirit sand interface membrane technology. Low impedance in the forward direction, low impedance in the reverse direction—two materials that are inherently mutually exclusive are driving each other at the molecular level. This framework is unprecedented in the entire field of card creation. After seeing the experimental data, Venerable Qi Yuan wrote a paper overnight, calling this theory Stellar-Class Energy Collapse. You shouldn't be unable to see the value of this design if you have it in your hands, so how can you still call it a trash card?"

Wei Tianlong's eyebrows furrowed.

"I am a soldier; I don't understand those fancy terms." His voice was as cold and hard as a steel plate. "I only know one thing—your thing burned my niece's Mental Power until she lost bladder control, burned her until she was kneeling on the ground calling for someone who has been dead for ten years. You tell me how advanced its theory is; do you think I care?"

Researcher Yun Zhi took a step forward. She stood still by the card-making table, her fingers still trembling slightly—not from fear, but from anger. The anger of a scholar watching as the fruits of a peer's painstaking labor were dismissively negated by a layman with a wave of their hand.

"That's because your person's Mental Power doesn't meet the standard!" Her volume rose by half an octave, her ear tips turning bright red. "The Stand card's will interrogation is the standard procedure for Mental Power conduction density testing! The stronger the soul, the deeper the interrogation; only those with weak Mental Power have their scars ripped open. It's clearly Wei Xiaoyu's own mental state that has flaws, and she collapsed because her childhood trauma was interrogated out of her. Why blame the card? This is like someone who can't even hold a sword steady, then turning around to blame the sword for being too heavy—where is the logic in that?!"

The courtyard fell silent for a moment.

This silence was not just quiet; it was a kind of sharper, teetering balance about to shatter. Researcher Yun Zhi's words were like a scalpel, precisely dissecting the wound Wei Tianlong least wanted touched. He certainly knew his niece had issues, and he knew better than anyone how large the hole in Wei Xiaoyu's heart was. But having an outsider point it out to his face was a different matter entirely.

Wei Tianlong took a deep breath.

He laughed. The laugh was shorter and colder than before.

"Mental Power doesn't meet the standard? If a peak Rank 4 daughter of a War Emperor's Mental Power doesn't meet the standard, then who is this card intended for, a 9th-tier Supreme? Do you have the ability to make a Rank 9 card?!"

His gaze passed over Researcher Yun Zhi and fell onto the card-making table, which was still covered in a pile of exploded materials, and then onto Su Bai's still-calm face. The curve of his mouth was mixed with undisguised mockery.

"Leading by several eras? Just with a piece of cardboard and a mantra that makes people screech like monkeys? It's absolutely laughable."

He helped Wei Xiaoyu Stand up. Wei Xiaoyu had barely recovered some of her senses, but her legs were still trembling. She used all her strength to push away Wei Tianlong's hand, keeping her head down, not daring to look at Su Bai, not daring to look at Researcher Yun Zhi, not daring to look at anyone. That genius young lady whom everyone feared now only wanted to shrink herself into a point that no one could see.

"Xiaoyu—"

Wei Tianlong reached out to support her. She dodged him. Her eyes were still red, her nose still wet, and she walked a few steps toward the door with her head down—then stopped.

She stood at the door for a moment. The moonlight cast her thin shadow onto the shattered bluestone. She opened her mouth, perhaps wanting to say something; she had once promised not to let her die on the stage, and had also promised to be his Magic Card Master.

But [ The World ]'s pair of violent dark golden eyes still lingered in her mind. That voice still echoed repeatedly within her bones—"Your soul, it is so feeble."

Her lips moved for a moment.

In the end, she said nothing.

Wei Tianlong sighed. He draped his military jacket back over his niece's shoulders and pushed her back as they walked out. When they reached the courtyard gate, he paused without turning around.

"Since you are so confident—"

His voice no longer held anger, leaving only an undisguised disdain. The kind of composure that comes from being certain the other party is merely bluffing and will inevitably reveal their true colors sooner or later.

"Then let's meet at the National Competition in the Imperial Capital. By then, Xiaoyu will be wearing Qi Yuan's [ Titan Furnace Heavy Armor ], and we'll let you see what absolute numerical crushing is."

The courtyard gate closed behind them.

The sound of the military off-road vehicle's engine gradually faded away. The leaves of the old locust tree were still swaying gently in the moonlight, and in the courtyard, only the water stains seeping into the cracks of the bluestone remained, along with the lingering purple-gold magic light that hadn't yet dissipated from the air.

Researcher Yun Zhi stood where she was, her hands still clutching the handle of the temperature-controlled experimental box. Her shoulders slowly relaxed after being tense for a long time, followed by a delayed sense of helplessness, not knowing where to put it.

"...Was I wrong?"

Her voice was more than an order of magnitude quieter than before.

Su Bai picked up the recording board from the card-making table and turned to a blank page.

"You weren't wrong."

"Then why do I feel like a bad person?"

"Because he wasn't wrong either." Su Bai clipped the pen onto the recording board. "He is an uncle; what he sees isn't a card, but a niece tortured to the point of collapse. You are a researcher; what you see is technology being misinterpreted—both of your perspectives happened to collide at the same blind spot."

Researcher Yun Zhi placed the temperature-controlled box onto the card-making table and opened the lid. The row of silver-blue test tubes inside was still quietly glowing, having nothing to do with the storm that had just occurred.

"So, are we continuing now?"

Su Bai looked down at the row of test tubes, moonlight leaking through the hole in the ceiling, casting tiny ripples on the silver-blue liquid surface.

"Of course, we continue."

Kyubey jumped down from the windowsill and landed on his shoulder, its tail slowly brushing against his earlobe.

"Su Bai, the first live test data for the Stand Card has been fully recorded. The peak of the Mental Power conduction density curve occurred 0.3 seconds before the collapse. That value—"

"It was forty percent higher than the theoretical estimate."

"Correct. In other words."

"In other words, [ The World ] acknowledged her soul." Su Bai spun the pen between his fingers, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "It's just that she doesn't know it herself yet... Though the two don't really matter right now. As it Stands, Wei Xiaoyu herself might be willing to accept my card, but her family factors mean it's impossible for her to be on the same front as me. I was still too naive... It seems I need to find a new partner."

He looked up and glanced toward the Imperial Capital. The residual purple-gold magic light was still slowly swirling in his pupils, merging with the moonlight.

"See you in the Imperial Capital."

Just three words. The tone was very light, as if he were making plans for a meal.

Researcher Yun Zhi looked at his expressionless face, then looked down at the silver-blue light still quietly swirling in the test tubes. She suddenly felt like she had something she wanted to say, but in the end, she just closed the lid of the temperature-controlled box, her fingers much steadier than usual.

"I'm going to prepare the next batch of materials."

"Mm."

"That paper Venerable Qi Yuan published before—"

"Just put your name on it alone."

"No, I wanted to ask if I should return the Titan Furnace sample they sent over."

"Keep it. We can use it as a control group at the tournament and compare what a technological generation gap really is."

"...You really hold a grudge."

"This is called academic rigor."