134: Chapter 134 Zawaldo, the Stand Arrives!

Half a month later, in the suburbs!

In the deepest part of an abandoned underground air-raid shelter, the indicator lights of monitoring equipment flickered densely in the darkness.

Twelve holographic screens floated in mid-air, each displaying data curves of different colors.

Behind the explosion-proof glass, Su Bai inserted the last calibration probe into the slot of the monitoring console.

He yawned.

"Su Bai. You slept for three hours last night."

"That's enough."

"For a Tier 2 Card Creator's physique, three hours is not enough to fully recover—"

"Kyubey. If you say one more word, I'll tie your tail into a bow."

Kyubey shut up.

Su Bai rubbed his eyes. For the past half month, he had basically been living in this temporarily converted testing ground.

Days were spent calibrating circuits, nights debugging data, and early mornings revising plans.

After that audience in the Imperial City, the hot search stayed at the top for an entire week.

Qi Yuan's three-thousand-word essay was reposted four million times, and the phrase "talent exhausted" was looped on the homepages of all major platforms.

He didn't read it.

Not a single one.

Researcher Yun Zhi pushed open the explosion-proof door and walked in. Her dark circles were two shades darker than the last time they met, and she was holding a steaming cup of coffee.

She was followed by someone.

Su Bai lifted his eyes.

Then he froze.

Qin Ye stood beside Researcher Yun Zhi. The grey cloth clothes and iron brass knuckles from the underground arena were completely gone.

Replacing them was an extremely intricate dark gothic-style Magical Girl dress.

It had a black base with layered pink lace, and dark golden gear patterns embroidered on the hem.

Her waist-length black hair was tied into a high ponytail, with the ends slightly curled. The dark golden gear pattern on the back of her hand was slowly pulsing.

She lifted her eyelids and glanced at Su Bai.

"...What are you looking at?"

"Just confirming I didn't walk into the wrong room."

Qin Ye lifted a corner of her skirt. Her expression remained completely calm.

"It's heavy. It's hard to move. The number of lace layers on this dress is enough to last a lifetime compared to my old clothes."

"Well, it is a Magical Girl [outfit], after all. How does it feel?"

"...It's, it's very good. This is a body born specifically for combat."

She let the skirt down.

Ever since her body was healed, her breakthrough speed had been rapid, and Su Bai had also handed over the Magical Girl [card] to her to use for leveling up.

After all, for a Magic Card Master, unlike a Card Creator who must create cards to level up, what a Magic Card Master needs is to contract suitable cards.

Su Bai pulled up the system panel and glanced at Qin Ye's data: level 40, already fully Tier 4. This speed was truly astonishing.

It was only half a month ago that she was a stray dog curled up in an arena cage, wrapping broken bones with bandages. Now, the numbers flashing on the panel were enough to make most Tier 4 professionals gasp.

However, this seemed to be related to her staying by his side recently, as he had received the Dragon Vein blessing, and the overflowing aura seemed to have immense benefits for others.

Kyubey said from the side: "After Qin Ye signed the Magical Girl contract, her soul gem integration reached 97%, and her nervous system threshold limit increased by nearly five times. Besides that, her Mental Power is also far higher than a normal person's; even after exiting the contract state, she can still maintain that Mental Power. After all, once using the magical girl card, the body is no longer flesh and blood, and the Mental Power has also been amplified by the soul gem."

"Five times?"

"Yes. Her soul density was already high to begin with. The soul gem integration is equivalent to liberating her Mental Power from a damaged container. Moreover... because Qin Ye was frequently injured in the past, her Mental Power resilience is far stronger than that of a normal warrior. Her Mental Power was constantly tempered through hardships, eventually becoming exceptionally powerful."

"Impressive."

Su Bai moved his gaze away from the panel and looked at Qin Ye: "It seems your training is going well. In that case, let's prepare for the final test."

"Yes!"

Qin Ye stood in front of the explosion-proof glass. Those dark golden eyes stared at the thick special alloy target on the other side of the glass.

The corners of her mouth curved—an extremely slight arc, so slight that probably only Su Bai could notice it.

It was a very pure thing, without any impurities. A thirst for power.

Researcher Yun Zhi placed the coffee on the monitoring console and pulled up the control panel.

"The nano-interface membrane has been fully embedded into the circuit. The Insect Arrow's causality anchoring and the Magical Girl's soul gem integration are theoretically compatible." Researcher Yun Zhi paused, "Theoretically. The actual operational data is still zero."

"Zero means it's never been tested."

"No kidding." Researcher Yun Zhi pushed up her glasses, "The core logic of the two systems differs by two dimensions. The Stand is an extension of the soul, while the Magical Girl is a stripping of the soul. Stitching these two things together, the theoretically viable window is extremely narrow."

"So narrow that if Qin Ye's innate meridians hadn't atrophied, if her Mental Power density hadn't been higher than the Tier 4 peak, and if there hadn't happened to be nano-scale formless spirit sand to act as a membrane buffer, this stitched-together system would be impossible to establish."

"The probability is roughly equivalent to grabbing a handful of sand at random in the abyss and happening to catch the exact grain you dropped in last week."

"But she meets all the conditions."

"Yes. Just her." Researcher Yun Zhi picked up her coffee and took a gulp, "At least under existing Mental Power screening standards, you won't find a second one among the National Competition participants."

Su Bai looked at Qin Ye. "Are you ready?"

Qin Ye flipped the tarot card in her hand. The dark golden beetle pattern shimmered with a ghostly light under the cold lights of the testing ground, pulsing in sync with the gear pattern on the back of her hand. The name of the card was [The World].

"Anytime."

Su Bai walked into the observation room behind the explosion-proof glass. Researcher Yun Zhi closed the door, her fingers flying across the control panel.

Twelve holographic screens simultaneously switched to real-time monitoring mode—Mental Power density, mana conductivity, heart rate, blood pressure, soul gem turbidity, Stand synchronization rate, time-axis offset; all data reset to zero, standing by.

"Test the basic linkage first." Su Bai pressed the communication button, "Activate the Stand while maintaining the Magical Girl form. Let's see if both systems can operate simultaneously."

Qin Ye closed her eyes.

The Magical Girl transformation doesn't require shouting a slogan, at least not her version.

The black skirt fluttered without wind, dark golden gear patterns spread from the back of her hand all the way to her forearm, and every layer of lace on the skirt emitted a faint, high-pitched hum.

Then she positioned her body into a genuine pose.

She stepped her left leg deeply forward, presenting a posture that was nearly a crouch yet full of tension. Her left heel was slightly raised, toes lightly touching the smoke, as if ready to traverse time and space at any moment.

Although she didn't know what it meant, it looked somewhat like a flamboyant pose a model might strike; it was none other than what Su Bai had taught her—the JOJO Pose!

"Za Warudo!" Accompanied by the imposing posture, Qin Ye's voice suddenly rang out.

The next instant, purple and golden light exploded from behind her! [The World], descends!