The moment the young man appeared on the screen, the tension that had frozen Xu Wanxue's face finally melted away. It was as if a weight had been lifted from her chest—she quietly sat back down, her posture relaxing for the first time since the chaos began.
But while she was calm again, the woman beside her was anything but.
The instant Liu Ruoying saw the young man's face clearly projected on the screen, she shot up from her chair like a cat that had just spotted a mouse. Her expression was a mixture of shock and disbelief as she stared at that familiar face.
Xu Wanxue's temple twitched. Knew it, she thought grimly. This shameless woman just had to make a scene now, of all times.
Feeling embarrassed, Xu reached over and tugged discreetly at Liu's sleeve, motioning for her to sit back down.
Realizing how ridiculous she must look, Liu tried to recover her composure, quietly leaning toward Xu to whisper:
"What's going on? Why is Lin Mo showing up there?"
Xu's lips barely moved as she replied in a low voice:
"It was his idea. He wanted to sit inside the AV and wait for them to make their move—then wipe the whole squad out in one go."
Liu's eyes widened.
"Are you insane? Do you have any idea how dangerous—"
She stopped mid-sentence as a chilling thought hit her.
The footage replayed in her mind: the AV had landed, and barely a second or two later, armor-piercing rounds had already struck the vehicle.
Even accounting for the negligible flight time of the shells, Lin Mo had somehow moved from inside the car to the rooftop exit in that tiny window of time—like he had teleported.
How fast did he have to be for that?
Xu simply said,
"Keep watching."
On the monitor, Lin Mo stood motionless, katana in hand, the rooftop wind howling around him. The silence that followed was eerie—like the calm before a storm.
Then the assassins hidden across the rooftop answered his words not with banter, but with gunfire.
The storm broke.
Bullets rained down on the stairwell entrance where Lin Mo had been standing, the iron door shredded into Swiss cheese within seconds. But the young man was gone.
Gunfire poured down like a torrential rain—followed by the strange sound of something wet hitting the ground.
In one corner of the rooftop, a severed head materialized out of thin air and rolled to the floor, blood spraying in a crimson arc. The invisible body it belonged to was suddenly outlined in red, the blood revealing its shape in a ghastly shimmer.
The assassins turned their weapons toward the spot, sweeping it with lead—but hit nothing.
The rooftop's pipes, tanks, and ventilation ducts provided perfect cover for Lin Mo's lightning-fast movement. Even the ones enhanced with Sandevistan speedware couldn't lock on to him.
The few who tried using smartguns fired blindly, filling the air with tracer rounds—but their tracking bullets lost lock instantly, as if their guidance systems were being jammed.
Desperation began to creep in.
None of them had any means to counter this monster of a speed-enhanced fighter.
Worse, every muzzle flash gave away their positions—
and Lin Mo picked them off one by one.
Blood bloomed like flowers on steel.
The squad leader barked orders, rallying the remaining operatives to regroup back-to-back.
If their target fought only with a blade, then closing formation would limit his movement—no matter where he struck from, he'd be met with overlapping fields of gunfire.
But Lin Mo was no fool.
Watching them bunch together, he crouched behind a water tank, activated his Sandevistan, and after a heartbeat of slowed time—
tossed several frag grenades toward their position.
Sometimes, being a "time-slow swordmaster" was fun.
But being a time-slow demolitions expert?
That worked too.
The detonations rolled like thunder, merging into one continuous roar.
When the echoes faded, the fight was over.
"Bastard! Coward!"
The surviving assassins screamed curses before the drones picked up their dying voices and streamed the audio back to Qianchi's data control room.
On the main display, Lin Mo danced across the rooftop, dismantling the ambushers one by one with surgical precision. Xu Wanxue finally exhaled, the tension in her shoulders easing.
"Status of the security response team?" she asked.
"They're en route, ma'am—ETA one minute!" an analyst blurted out, snapping back to focus.
Xu nodded, then turned to Liu Ruoying beside her and asked softly:
"Well? What do you see?"
Liu blinked, snapping out of her fangirl trance, and answered in a mock-serious tone:
"What do I see? Isn't it obvious? Your little brother moves faster than a maglev train. At this rate, he doesn't even need an AV to commute. He could just run to work and save you on fuel costs."
Even though no one in the room could track Lin Mo's movement with the naked eye, the system's slow-motion analysis displayed his actual speed in the top corner of the screen—and the numbers were staggering.
Xu's brow twitched.
"Is that level of speed… normal?"
Liu sighed.
"Let's just say it's highly abnormal. Using a Type-3 Sandevistan at his age—and operating it so naturally— That's not normal at all. And right now, he's clearly running in overclock mode. You know what that means."
Xu nodded slightly.
Every Sandevistan had a standard temporal dilation ratio—like a supercar with a built-in speed limiter.
In ordinary hands, it performed safely within limits.
But in the hands of a professional racer? It became something else entirely.
Lin Mo's time-slowing effect had clearly surpassed the safe average by a huge margin.
Liu exhaled again, keeping her word not to reveal that she had already known about Lin Mo's implant long ago.
"You're the lead engineer for the next-generation Sandevistan project, so you understand what this means. Your brother, Lin Mo… he's a once-in-a-generation talent. Honestly, the only person I can think of who could match him is that world-famous legend—Adam Smasher."
Xu looked at the screen again—Lin Mo standing atop the rooftop, sword gleaming, surrounded by the fallen assassins—and her eyes softened.
"Last night, he told me he wanted to install the Mark IV Sandevistan."
Liu chuckled.
"Of course he does. I've seen plenty of people who, after getting basic cyberware, start craving something stronger, faster, more advanced. And Lin Mo? He's one of the few who could actually handle it. Worst case, he can always swap back."
"So you think I should let him?" Xu asked quietly.
Liu didn't answer right away. She smiled faintly, her eyes still fixed on the screen.
On it, a Qianchi AV hovered midair as Lin Mo wiped his katana clean, the bodies of his enemies lying motionless at his feet.
Just that short, brutal battle was enough proof—Lin Mo had both the talent and the power.
Maybe that new generation of Sandevistan had been designed for someone exactly like him.
Impossible for most—but made for him.
"You already know the answer, don't you?" Liu said softly, resting her chin in her hands as she watched the screen.
Xu Wanxue nodded silently.
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