60: Chapter 60 The Nine-Tier Cupid Concept

The moment he passed through the space rift.

Su Bai felt as if he had been stuffed into a high-speed tumble dryer.

Everything in his field of vision was spinning, folding, and rearranging.

Then.

He stepped onto solid ground.

"...Wow."

Su Bai looked up and found himself standing in the center of a Card Creator's workshop that absolutely should not exist in the real world.

The dome was transparent.

A thin layer of pale golden spatial film covered the top, and through it, he could see a dense galaxy slowly rotating.

The way those stars were arranged.

He narrowed his eyes to take a closer look.

Every star's position corresponded precisely to a node of some kind of Spatial Circuit; the entire dome was a super-giant magic card woven from stars.

The card-making table floated in the center of the room.

A single block of void crystal, cut into a perfect regular octahedron, had different colored mana patterns flowing on each of its eight faces, as if eight independent circuits were operating simultaneously.

The items displayed on the shelves along the four walls made Su Bai's pupils dilate in shock.

A complete resentment crystal of a Rank 9 Nightmare Lord. It was the size of a fist, a whole, intact piece that fragments couldn't compare to.

A whole row of thread spools from an Abyssal Dream-Weaving Spider Emperor; the silver light flowing on each thread was blinding.

And there were at least twenty other high-level materials whose names he couldn't even identify; just taking one of them out would be enough to make Chairman Lin get on his knees and call him daddy.

Kyubey poked its head out from his shoulder, its red glass eyes scanning the surroundings.

[The concentration of causality laws in this room is very high. Su Bai, your master is very rich.]

"...Shut up."

[Okay.]

Li Qingyue had already walked to the card-making table.

Her bare feet stepped on the pale blue halo reflected by the void crystal, and her long silver-white hair shimmered with a cold light under the starlight.

She turned around, crossed her arms, and those crimson eyes looked at Su Bai.

"Sit."

Su Bai sat down on the floating chair next to the card-making table.

The chair automatically adjusted its height, allowing his pair of dark gray boots to just touch the ground.

High-end stuff.

"Master, you said we are starting to design the Rank 9 Kyubey now—"

"Before that."

Li Qingyue interrupted him.

The usual indifference was gone from that porcelain-doll-like face, replaced by an expression Su Bai wasn't very familiar with.

Hesitation.

The 9th-tier Supreme was hesitating.

"I need to clarify one thing with you first."

Li Qingyue walked under the dome and looked up at the slowly rotating stars.

"Advancing to Rank 9 doesn't just rely on cultivation."

She held up a finger.

"Every Rank 9 Card Creator who wants to advance further must craft a card that matches themselves. From Rank 9 Lower Position to Middle Position, you need at least one Rank 9 S-rank card. From Middle to Upper, you need an SS-rank card. And from Upper to Peak—"

She turned around.

Starlight was reflected in those crimson eyes.

"You need a Rainbow Card."

Su Bai blinked.

"So, Master, are you stuck at the Rank 9 Upper Position bottleneck?"

"Yes."

Li Qingyue's voice was very soft, "Because I don't have my own Rainbow Card. It's not just me; most of those old fogies sitting in the Truth Sanctuary are stuck at the same bottleneck."

She paused.

"A Rank 9 Rainbow Card is never something you can just craft whenever you want. The birth of every Rainbow Card requires the support of an entirely new system. You have Kyubey's Magical Girl system; this is your opportunity."

"But a Rank 9 Rainbow Card—"

She didn't finish.

Su Bai finished for her.

"Master, you think my Rank 9 Kyubey plan might be unreliable."

Li Qingyue did not deny it.

"A Rank 1 Rainbow Card is already amazing. Rank 9 is a matter of another dimension. I had you come tonight mainly to see your design approach. It would be great if you could make a Rank 9 Kyubey, but it's also normal if you can't."

She walked up to Su Bai and looked up at him.

There was seriousness in those red eyes, as well as a hint of well-hidden expectation.

"Even if you can't make a Rank 9 Rainbow Card, it can at least help me clarify some directions."

Su Bai was silent for a beat.

Then he pulled a thick stack of blueprints out of his shield storage space.

"Master."

"Hmm?"

"Read them before you say anything."

Li Qingyue took the blueprints.

The first page.

Her pupils contracted sharply.

It was a complete Causality Contract framework.

It looked similar to the previous Rank 1 Kyubey framework on the surface, but the underlying logic was completely different.

The core of the Rank 1 version was "deception"—using the resentment crystal of a Phantom Demon to carry the distortion of wishes.

The core of the Rank 9 version was changed to "observation."

Observation is interference, and interference is control.

These eight words were written by Su Bai at the very top of the first page of the blueprints, with the corresponding law derivation process densely annotated beside them.

Li Qingyue's fingers trembled slightly.

She was parsing this framework line by line with her Rank 9 Mental Power. With every line she parsed, the fortress of "impossible" in her heart crumbled a little more.

The second page.

Core material replacement plan:

Resentment crystal of a Rank 9 Nightmare Lord. A perfect carrier for the observation law; the Nightmare Lord's ability is to peer into a creature's fear and materialize it.

Ultra-tough silk threads of the Abyssal Dream-Weaving Spider Emperor. The physical skeleton of the interference law; the Spider Emperor's silk threads can exist in three spatial phases simultaneously.

Rank 9 formless spirit sand essence. The foundation of the Causality Contract, carrying the complete logic chain of "observation → interference → control."

The third page.

Twelve-Axis Causality Contract Spatial Circuit.

A full twelve axes. Six physical axes are responsible for matter folding, four phase axes are responsible for information transmission, plus two independent time axes—specifically used to construct a predictive feedback loop inside the card.

This means this card doesn't need to wait for a wish to be spoken.

It can predict the Causality Contract weight of the contractor before signing, generating the optimal Magical Girl form in advance.

Li Qingyue turned to the fourth page.

Then she froze completely.

The fourth page was the core of the entire design—the Concept Fusion Matrix.

The four concept modules of the Rank 1 Kyubey were expanded to nine here. Space Folding, Soul Displacement, Negative Energy Conversion, and Causality Contract; the first four were all retained.

The five newly added modules were:

soul gem · High-Dimensional Immortality. The soul is completely stripped and sealed into a multi-phase encrypted soul gem. The physical body becomes a remote-controlled shell unaffected by pain, fatigue, or physiological limitations. The soul gem is anchored in three spatial phases simultaneously—unless the gems in all phases are destroyed at the same time, the Magical Girl is immortal.

Causality Entanglement · Karma Amplification. The contractor's combat power does not just depend on their own causality quantity. The bonds she builds with others, the hopes entrusted by those she protects—every causality line will wrap around the soul gem, continuously increasing the magic output limit. The more people protected, the stronger the power.

Despair Phase Transition · Anti-Entropy Burst. All of a Magical Girl's magic comes from emotion itself. Hope when wishing provides initial combat power. Fear, anger, grief, and the determination to protect during battle—all are converted into releasable magic through the soul gem. The higher the emotional intensity, the greater the output. In extreme states, a Phase Transition Burst can be triggered, releasing all the emotional energy accumulated within the soul gem at once.

Grief Seed · Purification Cycle. Battle and negative emotions will continuously contaminate the soul gem. After defeating Abyssal monsters, a Grief Seed can be extracted for purification, while simultaneously recovering the monster's residual magic. Once the soul gem is completely blackened—the contractor will fall into irreversible Witchification, perishing after releasing energy equivalent to their lifetime causality quantity.

Causality Closed Loop · Wish Resonance. A Magical Girl's wish is the root of all her power. When the contractor's actions are highly consistent with her original intention when wishing, the soul gem produces wish resonance, doubling magic output and temporarily freezing gem contamination. Deviating from the wish accelerates contamination.

"This—"

Li Qingyue spoke.

There was undisguised shock in her voice.

"How did you derive the structure of this matrix?"

Unlike what she had imagined, the blueprints provided by Su Bai... were too complete!

And looking closely, the various effects perfectly matched the intensity of a Rank 9 Rainbow Card, and those theories... seemed to be real!

Just seeing those descriptions, Li Qingyue had a premonition that perhaps she might actually be able to craft a Rank 9 Rainbow Card...

Su Bai thought about it.

"Well, just scale up the Rank 1 framework proportionally and fill in the gaps, right?"

"Fill in the gaps?"

Li Qingyue repeated these four words, her voice carrying a calm that was on the verge of collapse.

"Su Bai, do you know that among the gaps you filled, one concept module is in the same direction as the core framework of the Space-Time Sanctuary I've been researching for thirty years? Your plan is at least three iterations faster than that wall I couldn't break through in seven years."

"Really?"

"Really."

Li Qingyue laid the blueprints flat on the card-making table.

Five pages, laid out in a row.

Her fingers slid from the Causality Contract framework to the twelve-axis circuit, from the Concept Fusion Matrix to the final Magical Girl transformation system.

Then she stopped at the fifth page.

The fifth page was the customized design for the Magical Girl transformation system.

A line of words was marked in red ink on it:

[TBD—Needs to be customized according to the contractor's characteristics]

"You haven't finished this part."

Li Qingyue looked up, a sharp light flowing in her crimson eyes.

"Does a Rank 9 Magical Girl need to be customized according to the contractor's law attributes?"

"Yes."

Su Bai nodded, jumped off the chair, and walked to the card-making table.

"The Rank 1 card is a general version; as long as it's a living person, they can sign it, and the Magical Girl form is randomly generated based on the wish. But Rank 9 is different—the contractor has already mastered laws themselves."

He pointed to the blank space on the fifth page.

"For example, Deputy Commander Xiao, her core law is fire. If she were to sign with the general version of Kyubey, the Magical Girl form randomly generated after wishing would likely conflict with her fire law, or even cancel each other out."

"So we need to add an adaptation system to the Rank 9 version."

"Incorporate the Rank 9 powerhouse's law attributes into the generation logic of the Magical Girl form. Let the abilities after transformation and the contractor's original laws amplify each other."

Li Qingyue stared at that blank page for a full three seconds.

Then she turned to Su Bai.

The expression on that porcelain-doll face was one Su Bai had only seen when Zhao Dahai first saw the Seven-Axis Circuit.

The expression of an ant placed in front of a world map.

"...You even thought of this."

"Of course. With Deputy Commander Xiao's personality, if she couldn't use fire after transforming, she would absolutely stuff my cat into a bazooka and launch it into the Abyss."

Kyubey tilted its head.

[Su Bai, are you worried about me? No need. The power of a bazooka is not enough to—]

"Shut up."

[Okay.]