75: Chapter 75 The Hater Leader Wants to Transform

Just as Zhao Dahai was saying, "If you don't start promoting, our shop is going to be taken over by the Beast God Armament—", a dark red afterimage rushed out from the side.

The movement was fast.

So fast that Zhao Dahai only saw a young woman wearing a dark-colored kendo uniform with one hand pressing on the hilt of her sword, her left foot stomping hard on the ground, as she lunged straight at Su Bai in a standard sword-step thrust posture.

Aura fluctuation, Rank 2.

"Su Bai—!!"

A low shout full of vigor exploded.

Chu Yin walked with steps she thought were full of oppressive power, but in reality, because she was nervous, the distance of each step was different.

She stood still behind Su Bai, pulled her right hand out of her pocket, and her five fingers accurately clamped toward Su Bai's wrist—the movement was indeed beautiful; it was the direct-hand grappling style taught personally by Sword Saint Lu Changsheng.

Then Su Bai dodged to the side.

The movement wasn't big. He just moved his left shoulder back about twenty centimeters.

Chu Yin missed her grab.

Next, Su Bai switched the milk tea to his left hand, and his right hand took the momentum to clamp her wrist, pulling it diagonally downward—borrowing the force she used to rush over.

Chu Yin stumbled a step.

Su Bai used this gap to place the milk tea cup in his hand on the steps by the side of the road, the movement very light, like placing a precision instrument.

He turned his head, his deep purple eyes looking from her dark-patterned wrist guard to the cuffs of her kendo uniform, finally landing on her face.

Expressionless.

"Looking for me?"

Chu Yin almost had her momentum broken by these three words.

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to maintain a villainous face.

"The creator of the Magical Girl. Su Bai, right? Let me tell you, that magical girl card of yours blasphemes the dignity of warriors, stains the spirit of swordsmen, and is the enemy of all orthodox cultivators."

She gave her line delivery skills a perfect score in her heart.

The pearl in Zhao Dahai's mouth almost choked his windpipe. Lin Xiao's milk tea stopped in mid-air.

Su Bai looked down at her.

"Are you trying to fight?"

Exactly what she wanted. The corners of Chu Yin's mouth curled up uncontrollably, and she quickly pressed them back down.

She broke free from Su Bai's hand, stepped back two paces, pressed her left hand on the hilt of her sword, and set up a starting stance.

"You have guts. But I won't bully you—since you are Rank 2, I will use Rank 2 magic power to fight you. The loser must agree to one request from the winner. Do you dare to accept?"

"Sure."

Chu Yin's heartbeat suddenly accelerated by a beat. Not out of fear, but excitement. She lowered her center of gravity, and Rank 2 magic power poured from her palm into the scabbard.

She suppressed it very seriously—not a lazy approach of just tapping to lower the panel values to Rank 2, but compressing the magic power to Rank 2 capacity while retaining the circulation precision of Rank 7.

This was what Sword Saint Lu Changsheng taught her: actual combat is practiced, and oppressive power is honed.

Even if suppressed to the same rank, her decades of foundation in sword stance were enough to rub Su Bai into the ground.

Then she could use a condescending senior tone to say—"Hand over the magical girl card, and this young lady will destroy it for you."

And finally use it secretly back in the dormitory.

She imagined the scene of her transforming into a Magical Girl for the first time in the dormitory. That scene was too beautiful, so much so that she didn't notice the corners of her mouth had already curled up uncontrollably.

Right now.

Chu Yin took a deep breath, lowered her center of gravity, and in an instant, erased the six-meter distance between them to within half a meter.

The draw-sword style combined with the forward-step slash and the sheath strike, a three-stage combo, with her power held back by a full thirty percent—she didn't want to actually cut Su Bai; she just wanted to scare him and make him blush and kneel on the ground to beg for mercy.

Su Bai shifted to the left by the distance of a fist.

The draw-sword slash brushed past his collar, the airflow only cutting off two loose threads.

Chu Yin quickly turned her wrist, changing the slash into a lift, the tip of the sword sweeping from bottom to top toward Su Bai's right shoulder, while the scabbard in her left hand struck horizontally at his knee bend.

This was the chain strike personally taught by Sword Saint Lu Changsheng; she had used this move in the Kendo Association to take down no fewer than twenty opponents below Rank 5.

Su Bai used the back of his right hand to slap the sword blade aside by three inches, and took the momentum to step back two paces.

The movement was very light. It was as if he knew in advance where she would slash.

"...You know martial arts?" Chu Yin's sword stopped in mid-air, and she frowned.

"A little bit." Su Bai patted the dust off the back of his hand.

Chu Yin bit her lower lip. This was completely different from the script.

In her script, Su Bai should have been scared by her draw-sword slash to the point of sitting on the ground, looking at her with teary eyes using those deep purple eyes, and then she would lecture him in a senior's tone.

She gripped the hilt again, exerted force with her sword steps, and this time did not hold back her power.

The sword blade carved a silver arc in the air that was almost impossible for the naked eye to track, aiming straight for Su Bai's right shoulder.

Su Bai stepped forward. His left hand pressed onto the top of her scabbard, and his right-hand knife precisely chopped onto the numbing nerve on her wrist.

Chu Yin's right hand went limp, and the sword slipped from her hand.

She wanted to step back to open up distance, but suddenly heard a voice in her ear: "Za—Warudo!"

Wait, what kind of accent is that?

The World? World?

What does it mean?

In the split second her brain was thinking, a fist the size of a sandbag suddenly rushed straight at her face. It was too sudden, and Chu Yin had no time to react before she saw the fist constantly magnifying, and the next second—

Bang!

She felt her nose had been punched away, the world spinning.

It took no more than five seconds in total.

"Wa... Waaaaaaah!"

Chu Yin covered her nose, sat on the ground with a thud, and couldn't help but wail herself.

It was really, too painful!

The key is, what was that situation?

Why did Su Bai teleport over immediately after that... what was it, Za—Warudo?

Why?

Is this a capability a Rank 2 Card Creator should have?

Can someone explain?

She raised her head; Su Bai was standing in front of her, against the light, seemingly preparing to throw a second punch.

Zhao Dahai's milk tea cup slipped from his hand and rolled twice on the ground.

He leaned against the wall of the milk tea shop, his mouth open in a perfect O-shape, looking at this scene with eyes that suggested his worldview had been crushed.

Lin Xiao's eyebrows raised by at least three degrees. She looked down at the cream puff in her hand, confirming she wasn't dreaming.

Tears plopped onto the collar of Chu Yin's kendo uniform.

Pain was one thing. It was because the posture she fell to the ground in was so ugly, and because she, a direct disciple of a Rank 7 Sword Saint, was taken down head-on by a Rank 2 using taijutsu, and even after suppressing her magic power, she couldn't win; it was so embarrassing, so embarrassing, so embarrassing.

The hard shell she had polished for over ten years shattered into pieces in this instant, the fragments piercing into every soft corner of her heart.

Su Bai looked down at her, the second punch at least not thrown, but he hesitated and said:

"You said just now that if you lost, you would agree to one request."

Chu Yin's teardrops fell plop-plop; she used her sleeve to wipe them, but no matter how she wiped, she couldn't wipe them all away.

The tears in her eyes blurred Su Bai's figure; she buried her face in her hands, her voice muffled in her palms as she poured it out.

"I just wanted a magical girl card—!"

The crying collapsed from whimpering into wailing, her shoulders shaking with sobs, her ponytail falling from her shoulder, the ends sweeping on the ground and getting covered in a thin layer of dust.

The words she had hidden for so long were finally torn open, and they could no longer be held back.

"I didn't really want to fight; I just wanted to use my senior status to scare you and then make you give me the card! I dream of transforming into a Magical Girl! I've watched the recording of your Monthly Exam dozens of times, took screenshots of all the transformation scenes, and every night I think about what color ribbon I should use to match my hair if I wore that lace dress—I even bought hairpins, one pink, one blue, one purple, I've been waiting for the day I could—but I just can't grab one—I just want a card—I really, really want one—"

The louder she cried, the more her voice became hoarse to the point of being unrecognizable by the end, her whole face buried in her palms, her shoulders shaking like leaves in the wind.

Zhao Dahai opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

He turned his head to look at Lin Xiao, finding that Lin Xiao's expression had twisted from the confusion of a normal person into a kind of bewilderment approaching a philosophical level.

"She is Sword Saint Lu Changsheng's disciple, right," Zhao Dahai said in a tone that suggested his worldview had been crushed, "She is Rank 7, right? She just cried, right—why would a Rank 7 kneel on the street crying about wanting to wear a dress?"

"Because it's cute." Lin Xiao hugged the bag of cream puffs, using a smile that hid her merits and fame to barely maintain the stability of her facial muscles, but the corners of her eyes were twitching.

What?

Rank 7?

Su Bai's mouth twitched.

Why are both the master and the disciple so abstract?

Chu Yin sniffed hard, finally lifting her face from her palms, her eyes red as if they had just been smoked by onions.

She fiercely wiped the tears off her face with her cuff, her voice still trembling, but she tried hard to put on a fierce tone.

"You—you are not allowed to tell my master."

"I don't know them, so I won't go out of my way to tell them." Su Bai reached out to pick up the sword from the ground and handed the hilt to her.

Chu Yin took the sword, sniffed again, and looked up at him with teary, blurred eyes.

Su Bai squatted in front of her; in his deep purple pupils, there was no ridicule she feared, nor comfort, only a focus like he was confirming order parameters.

"The request you mentioned just now. magical girl card... uh, what configuration do you want?"

Chu Yin froze for a moment. Then she gave up on saving face. Her face had already been lost to this extent, so there was nothing left to hide.

"I want—a custom one, the kind that only belongs to me, the kind that is different from everyone else's. I've already thought of the name, called Star Magical Girl · Chu Yin, because that one of yours doesn't have a prefix and seems less high-class."

"And I want a stronger one; I have a salary card that I've saved for many years—"

She pulled a Star Card from the inner pocket of her jacket and held it with both hands in front of Su Bai like she was holding a token.

"It's all for you."

Su Bai scanned the Star Card with the system interface. Data flashed rapidly in his deep purple pupils, and then his eyebrows twitched slightly.

Soul wavelength compatibility, ninety-nine percent.

"Your wavelength almost perfectly matches the underlying contract of my magical girl card."

Su Bai moved his gaze away from the system interface and landed on Chu Yin's tear-stained face, "I can use better materials to custom-make an exclusive version for you. Rainbow-grade Spirit Pattern Paper, S-grade Causality Crystal, original seven-axis spatial frame instead of a reverse-engineered version. The effect will be about twice as strong as the mass-produced cards on the market. The price is—"

Chu Yin held her breath.

"The price is that you have to accept the full set of Magical Girl transformation animations, no frame skipping. The entire Magical Girl transformation process must be completed; if even one frame is missing, the contract is voided."

"And I can't forge a Rank 7 card; at most, I can give you a special version, and what specific effects it has, you'll only know when you awaken it."

Chu Yin's eyes lit up. The fire ignited in those red, crying eyes was more lethal than any sword strike she had swung just now.

She sprang up from the ground, grabbed Su Bai's hands with her right hand, and shook them up and down vigorously.

"I'm willing, I'm willing to do it all! I'm free right now! When do we start! Right now?"

She didn't seem to care at all about being Rank 7 or not.

Zhao Dahai finally recovered from his petrified state. He bent down to pick up the milk tea cup from the ground and said to Lin Xiao in a tone of having seen through the mortal world: "So we have an extra ally now? Someone who has been cursing us on the internet for so many days? A Rank 7 swordswoman who knelt on the ground crying about wanting to wear a dress?"

"Not an ally." Lin Xiao stuffed the last cream puff into her mouth, took a bite, and said vaguely, "It's the second Magical Girl."

"...Who is the first one?"

"Guess."

Zhao Dahai couldn't guess. But he decided not to delve into this matter anymore. He had learned to face this absurd fact—after staying with Su Bai for a long time, all kinds of outrageous things would become daily occurrences.

Su Bai took the box containing the S-grade crystal from Zhao Dahai's hand and turned to walk in the direction of the Card Creator studio.

Chu Yin followed behind, still using the back of her hand to wipe her face, her eyes still red, but the curve of her mouth could no longer be suppressed.

She looked down at the dust-covered cuffs of her kendo uniform, calculating in her heart—once she got the card, she would definitely transform at the first opportunity when she got back, then take twenty photos in front of the mirror, not post a single one, and save them all in an encrypted folder.

Kyubey poked its head out of Su Bai's pocket, its red glass eyes quietly reflecting Chu Yin's back.

Its tail swept slowly twice.

[That Rainbow Card, what price do you intend to use to contract it?]

Su Bai didn't turn back. The reply on the encrypted frequency was only three words.

[She is already paying it.]

Lin Xiao watched the two figures walking away and lowered her head to send a message in the [Three-Person Card-Making Mutual Aid Group] chat.

[Lin Xiao]: [@Zhao Dahai Fatty, I think I've found the turning point Su Bai mentioned.]

[Zhao Dahai]: [I saw it too. It's just that this turning point is a Rank 7 swordswoman who is even more tsundere than you, kneeling on the street crying about wanting to wear a dress. Are you sure this is a turning point?]

[Lin Xiao]: [...Forget I said anything.]

She put her phone into her pocket, picked up the remaining half bag of cream puffs, and stepped to follow.

Zhao Dahai sighed, bent down to pick up the milk tea Su Bai had left on the steps—it hadn't spilled, thank goodness.

He took a sip and muttered to himself: "Today there was a Rank 7 swordswoman crying on the street begging to transform; tomorrow there will probably be a 9th-tier Supreme wearing a tutu going to single-handedly challenge the Abyss Lord."

He bit the milk tea straw in his mouth and stepped to catch up with the team.

"Is the strawberry cake thing still on?" He shouted to Lin Xiao.

"Wait until the new ally pays first." Lin Xiao said without turning her head.

Chu Yin walked half a step behind Su Bai, still using the back of her hand to wipe the last traces of tears from the corners of her eyes.

Her ponytail hung down from her shoulder, the ends still covered in the dust she had rubbed off from falling to the ground earlier.

She secretly looked up at Su Bai's back, then quickly retracted her gaze, the curve of her mouth unable to be suppressed despite several attempts.

Finally, she could transform into a Magical Girl, although it was a bit embarrassing, she thought.

Then she remembered one thing—she still had to explain the origin of this card to her master.

Forget it. Didn't her master go to spar with Su Bai a few days ago, and after the fight, said some nonsense like "wheelchair accessories" and "magic shock-absorbing pads"?

This is heritage!

She gripped the hilt a little tighter, the curve of her mouth finally giving up resistance, bending into an unreserved smile under the silver light of the aurora sky.