Paris, the city of romance. Along the Seine, the evening wind always carried the rich aroma of coffee and a faint, lingering artistic melancholy.
Lately, though, a baffling urban legend had been spreading through the heart of the city.
A mysterious magician in a Spiral top hat had vowed that at next month's public show, the city's signature landmark, the ten-thousand-ton Eiffel Tower, would physically "vanish" before the eyes of everyone watching.
Everyone assumed it was just some circus's tacky stunt to sell tickets.
But tonight, in a top-tier century-old theater in central Paris, a packed house didn't dare breathe.
There was no cheap dry ice on the stage, and no hackneyed red curtain.
Enormous brass gears meshed slowly beneath the dome, producing a deep, bewitching mechanical rumble.
White high-pressure steam burst from a tangle of pipes, turning the whole stage into something like a dreamlike workshop from the Industrial Revolution.
"Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to... the Boundary of Miracles!"
With a crisp snap of the fingers, the metal furnace at center stage, three stories tall and absurdly flamboyant, abruptly fell silent.
Vill-V, in her Spiral top hat, stood at the very top of it.
Tonight's headline act was the classic disappearing-person illusion.
Except that the word "ordinary" had never appeared in any of Vill-V's scripts.
She snapped her fingers again, and twelve fully armed security guards carrying live weapons marched onto the stage and wheeled an enormous transparent reinforced-glass box to the center.
Inside the box sat an enthusiastic audience member, picked at random to come up on stage.
"Watch closely, everyone, and don't blink. Because on my stage, the laws of physics are just a joke... one I can rewrite whenever I like."
Vill-V's cane came down hard on the metal platform.
In an instant, the colossal furnace erupted in dazzling blue light, and a powerful electromagnetic pulse, visible to the naked eye, swept across the whole hall.
Under the fixed stare of thousands of eyes, the audience member, sealed inside a glass box with twelve gun barrels trained on it, turned in midair into tens of thousands of mechanical birds gleaming with metallic luster!
The birds smashed through the glass and swept across the theater's dome like a silver storm. Then, amid gasps of overwhelming astonishment, they dissolved into golden gear fragments that drifted down like snow.
And in an empty seat in the last row, that same audience member sat holding a half-finished cup of cola, utterly bewildered, with no idea how he had crossed a hundred meters in a single instant.
"Boom!"
After a brief, dead silence, the whole house erupted in frenzied applause and screams loud enough to lift the roof!
Everyone was hysterically shouting the name of The Great Magician, as if worshipping a god come down to earth.
High on the stage, Vill-V spread her arms and drank it in, soaking in the deluge of praise.
This was the stage she wanted. This was the kind of cheering that could delight her genius brain.
Yet as The Great Magician's gaze swept over the front-row VIP section, it stopped dead for half a second.
Among the powerful and wealthy, faces flushed with excitement as they clapped for all they were worth, sat one conspicuous blond gentleman.
He wore a finely tailored white suit.
At that moment the gentleman was looking at Vill-V on stage, his hands tapping lightly together, maintaining a flawless courtesy and elegance.
But the [Expert] persona in Vill-V's mind caught the anomaly at once.
In this man's eyes, those deep emerald-green eyes, there was not a trace of awe, nor wonder, nor even curiosity.
He watched the gears of the mechanical storm whirl through the air with the calm of someone watching a three-year-old clumsily build a sandcastle in a mud puddle.
His applause was nothing more than perfunctory social courtesy.
"What an infuriating look..."
Vill-V tilted her hat brim down, and the corner of her mouth curled into a dangerous arc.
...
The show ended in triumph.
Wild fans blocked the theater's front doors so tightly that not even water could seep through, hoping for a glimpse of The Great Magician's true face.
Vill-V, meanwhile, had already slipped away through a secret passage of her own design and reached the theater's underground parking garage ahead of them.
In the dim light, the blond gentleman was walking alone toward an old black car.
"Just a moment, sir with the lovely golden hair."
Vill-V stepped out of the shadows.
The blond gentleman stopped. He inclined his head slightly and performed an impeccable gentleman's bow.
"A superb performance, Madame Magician. May I ask what brings you to wait for me here?"
"Brings is a bit strong. It's just pure curiosity."
Vill-V tapped her cane lightly against the floor.
"You disguised it well, but in front of my magic, no audience member can hide their true feelings. Your eyes told me you found my performance just now... boring?"
The man was briefly taken aback, then laughed openly.
"I owe you an apology. For a master who has fused machinery and visual art to this degree, my absentmindedness just now was truly a kind of sacrilege."
"But since you ask, I have no wish to hide it."
"Allow me to introduce myself first. My name is Otto. Otto Apocalypse."
"Apocalypse..."
Vill-V narrowed her eyes.
As an independent inventor with deep connections in the underworld, she had naturally heard that name. He was the Bishop of Schicksal, the organization that controlled vast resources and secrets.
"So, esteemed Bishop Otto, was my magic too crude to deserve your attention?"
Vill-V asked back, a hint of provocation in her voice.
"Not at all." Otto shook his head, the smile on his face fading slowly. "Your magic, both in its use of machinery and in how it commands the audience's psychological defenses, is a one-of-a-kind artistic treasure of this age."
"However..." Otto changed course. "If you had ever had the good fortune to witness what true magic is, I'm sure you'd understand why I couldn't sit still tonight. Because a counterfeit is, in the end, only a counterfeit."
The moment he said it, the air in the entire underground garage seemed to drop to freezing.
The face that always wore an arrogant grin went cold in an instant.
The [The Great Magician] persona in her mind felt an affront like none before, while the [Expert] persona sounded alarms in a frenzy, weighing every word the man had just said.
"Are you belittling me?" Vill-V tightened her grip on the cane. "Using some ethereal thing called magic to deny the mechanical miracles I built with the work of a lifetime?"
"As I said, these are two entirely different concepts."
Otto sighed and slowly drew a delicate object from his inside jacket pocket, something that looked like it came from the future.
It was a [Skyward Eye] pair of AR glasses.
"No matter how grand, the essence of stage magic is a fleeting performance built from visual deception, the refraction of light, and psychological suggestion."
"The audience gasps because they know it's fake but can't find the flaw."
Otto held the glasses out in front of Vill-V, and his voice dropped lower.
"But what if one day you discovered that humans need only put on a small pair of AR glasses like these to break free of the rules of physics entirely, and step into a real world a thousand, a hundred times more thrilling than your magic..."
"In that world, the false is the real, and code is the incantation of creation."
"When that day comes, what meaning do you think there will be left in a magic that struggles on with gears, dry ice and sleight of hand?"
Vill-V froze.
Her eyes fixed on the object in Otto's hand.
With the sharp eye of The Great Inventor, she saw in a single instant that this creation was extraordinary.
The faint light flowing across its surface, the nano-scale seams that belonged to no existing industrial system, all sent one wild signal to her brain.
This thing was at least half a century ahead of the present world!
Otto said nothing more.
He gently placed the AR glasses called [Skyward Eye] into Vill-V's palm.
"The age is being rebuilt, Madame Magician. I hope this small gift brings some trifling inspiration to your next performance."
With that, the blond Bishop turned and opened the car door. To the roar of the engine, the old black car glided smoothly off into the Paris night.
Only Vill-V remained, standing alone in the empty garage, unable to collect herself for a long while.
...
Back in the theater's luxurious backstage lounge, Vill-V threw herself straight into her workbench.
In preparing this once-in-a-century Paris show, she had pursued extreme focus and cut herself off from nearly every connection to the outside network for months.
As a result, she had no idea what earth-shattering changes had taken place in the world beyond.
Now, turning the exquisite [Skyward Eye] over in her hands, The Great Inventor persona in her mind was already boiling over.
"Incredible... It's a work of art! The design of this neural micro-interface, the particle arrangement of the retinal projection, and this core chip whose material I can't even analyze..."
Muttering to herself, Vill-V pulled out a data cable and tried to connect it to her private encrypted terminal.
"Ding—"
The instant the connection went through, a huge torrent of data poured onto the screen.
Vill-V eagerly got online and typed the four characters "Skyward Eye" into the search box.
A second later, a waterfall of headlines hit the screen and left the supremely arrogant Great Magician dizzy.
[Epoch-making masterpiece of technology! miHoYo game studio officially launches cross-generational AR immersion device: the Skyward Eye!]
[The whole internet is boiling! Honkai: Ordinal Scale closed beta goes viral as humanity formally enters the metaverse age!]
[miHoYo Studio Director Su Yu: We will reshape your perception of reality!]
"miHoYo... Su Yu?!"
Vill-V stared hard at the familiar face on the screen, and her eyes shifted from shock to an uncontainable fervor.
"Well, well, Su Yu, you scheming little devil!"
Vill-V slammed her hand on the table and ground her teeth.
"Pulling off something this huge without a peep, kicking off a technological revolution, and you didn't dare invite me?!"
She immediately opened the private social account she hadn't logged into in ages.
The moment she came online, the tidal wave of unread-message alerts nearly crashed her phone.
And among several thousand unread messages, the contact with the green snake avatar sat firmly at the top of the count.
That was Mobius.
From the moment Vill-V left Arc City a few months ago, Mobius had been sending messages.
Three months ago: [Dead yet? If not, send me the data on that junk mechanical arm of yours.]
Two months ago: [I hear you're going to blow up the Eiffel Tower? Don't die in a French prison. I haven't sliced your neurons for study yet.]
One month ago: [The lab rat's been up to something big lately. Where the hell did you die?]
Up to yesterday: [Dead yet?]
Looking at the screen full of "Dead yet?", Vill-V sighed helplessly and tapped out a few words:
"Too tough to die. Alive and kicking."
Less than ten seconds after she sent it, the top of the screen showed the other side typing.
After a good while, a cold line came back from Mobius:
[If you're not dead, get back to Arc City right now.]
Then, as if feeling that wasn't threatening enough, Mobius added a deadly lure:
[Unless you'd rather keep playing those cheap tricks out there and miss the once-in-a-lifetime, truly world-shaking grand magic show.]
Reading that line, Vill-V couldn't keep the smile off her lips any longer.
She swept the playing cards and magic props off the table into the trash and carefully tucked the [Skyward Eye] into her inner pocket.
"The Paris show ends here. Looks like the stage in Arc City has already been set for me."
...
At the same moment.
The old black car hadn't gone far. It had stopped at a quiet Seine overlook.
Otto got out, opened a black umbrella, and quietly watched the broken lights shimmering on the river's surface.
Amber, who had kept her optical camouflage on the whole time, slowly emerged from the shadows and stood respectfully behind Otto.
"Lord Bishop, your eye is as sharp as ever," Amber said softly. "Tracking down this elusive Great Magician must have been a real headache."
"Indeed." Otto smiled and twirled the umbrella handle, flicking off a few drops of rain. "They say that once she's lost in some invention, or preparing some earth-shaking show, she can vanish for most of a year."
"If Kallen hadn't happened to pick up one of the Great Magician's theater flyers while shopping, finding her in the vast sea of people across Europe wouldn't have been easy."
Otto turned to face the respectful Amber.
"Still, this counts as completing an important commission for Su Yu."
"After all, the Great Magician's talents will undoubtedly bring immeasurable technical gains to Su Yu's next plan."
In fact, months ago Su Yu had already used secret channels to commission the Bishop of Schicksal to search for Vill-V's whereabouts.
Su Yu knew full well that the "defense line" to come could not do without this top-tier engineering expert.
Amber nodded in agreement.
But in her eyes, a deep hesitation and bewilderment gradually surfaced.
After a moment's pause, she still spoke up and reported to Otto: "Lord Bishop, our intelligence network in Shenzhou has just sent back the latest developments."
"Go on."
"The highest levels of Shenzhou have passed, unanimously and at unprecedented speed, the Arc City Special Planning Zone bill submitted by miHoYo Studio."
"Now all of Arc City has been designated as the global launch site and pilot special zone for Honkai: Ordinal Scale."
Amber's tone grew heavier and heavier. Even as a top Schicksal intelligence officer, she was shaken by the figures in the report.
"This has gone far beyond 'releasing a game.' Massive quantities of military-grade holographic projection equipment are being installed at a frantic pace in every corner of Arc City."
"What's more, over sixty percent of Shenzhou's heavy-industry factories are running at full power, secretly producing AR glasses components and unidentified energy hub devices day and night, and ships them on without pause across Shenzhou..."
Amber raised her head, her eyes full of confusion.
"Lord Otto, what exactly is Director Su planning? This frenzied nationwide infrastructure push, this resource tilt at any cost..."
"What real connection does it have to the 'doomsday' he spoke of at the negotiating table? Does he truly intend to use a game to hold back some so-called catastrophe?"
Otto showed no surprise at Amber's report.
He only narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze piercing the rainy Paris night as if he could see the distant East.
"Amber, time is running short, and there's no need for more guesswork now. Very soon, the paper over this window on the world will be torn away completely."
"Su Yu, and the Anti-Entropy behind him, will soon have no choice but to bring many things hidden in the dark into the light."
"With all due respect, Lord Bishop."
Amber drew a deep breath and finally asked the question that had weighed on her.
"I still can't understand why you ordered full support for this seemingly insane plan without knowing the truth, without even learning the other side's hand."
In Amber's view, this ran completely against Otto's usual way of planning thoroughly before acting and holding everything in the palm of his hand.
The rain seemed to grow heavier, drumming a dull note against the black canopy.
Otto was silent for a long time.
Unbidden, his mind returned to that day, when Su Yu had casually used some kind of spatial teleportation to deliver that glass of whiskey to him out of thin air.
That was a case of Outclassed by None, something entirely beyond the physical laws of the present.
Otto suddenly laughed, and the laugh held some bitterness, some self-mockery, and a clarity that comes from seeing through life and death.
He said to Amber beside him: "In truth, every word I said to the Great Magician in the garage just now came from the heart."
"Amber, one day you may suddenly realize that there is a kind of person in this world, or rather a kind of Strength, that with a mere snap of the fingers can crush you and all the forces you take pride in as easily as ants..."
"And then you'll find that worldly power and scheming calculation no longer seem to matter very much."
Amber was stunned. It was the first time she had ever heard such words, so full of helplessness, from this all-capable Bishop.
"But the truly terrifying part is not that."
Otto let the smile fade and slowly closed his eyes. His voice carried a tremor that even he was unwilling to admit.
"The truly terrifying part is when you find that the one who already rivals a god in your eyes, who wields Outclassed by None... is preparing frantically, day and night, without rest. He is afraid of something even stronger, something unmatched, something unknown!"
"He builds like mad, he pours out infrastructure like mad... because he knows a storm capable of tearing the entire world apart is about to arrive."
Otto opened his eyes again and gazed at the bustling yet fragile Paris night, letting out a long sigh.
"At a time like that, you had better pray it's only an absurd nightmare. But sadly, this is no dream, no heaven, and no hell. Amber, this is the mortal world we live in."
"It sounds like you hold a kind of... groundless blind faith in him?"
Seeing that Amber still looked a little lost, Otto shook his head gently and brought the conversation to a close.
"If you still don't understand Director Su's situation right now, or why he's gone so mad..."
Otto turned and walked toward the old car behind him, his low voice echoing through the rainy night:
"Then think of everything we're going through now as a novel being serialized."
"To sum it up with the simplest, bluntest title possible..."
"Chapter One: He Is Invincible Under Heaven."
"Chapter Two... Enemies From Above."
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