PGVCW 5

 

Playing God in Various Catastrophic Worlds

By

siofra

Chapter 5: The Immortal’s Training Regime

Having settled on the [Xianxia Setting], Xia Wang’an immediately sat down with 007 to hash out the details.

This was her long-standing habit. Whenever she was preparing to launch a new [Setting], she and her system would always conduct a rigorous and serious brainstorming session. Out of the thirty-one worlds she had traversed, in at least twenty of them, the human-system duo had huddled together to meticulously map out their grand strategies.

Xia Wang’an put on an expression of utmost gravity: [Step one: Tell the mortals of the realm that this deity practices the supreme Dao of Immortality.]

007 chimed in smoothly: [Step two: Harvest the boundless Faith Power of the believers.]

Xia Wang’an: [Step three: Beat up anyone who refuses to believe.]

At this point, she paused, feeling a slight pang of hesitation. She asked: [Wait, do true cultivators go around beating people up? Will that shatter my ethereal persona?]

007, having spent an entire afternoon binge-reading web novels, rummaged through its database before responding with absolute, unyielding certainty: [Immortal cultivators absolutely beat people up! And they have a massive arsenal of divine arts and moves to do it with!]

A look of profound relief washed over the black-haired girl’s face: [Then there’s no problem at all! If a beating doesn’t make them believe, we’ll just give them a second beating, and keep pounding them until they submit and bow down!]

She looked immensely proud of herself: [And just like that, our flawless master plan is complete!]

007 immediately initiated manual sound effects: [Clap clap clap! We’ve cooked up another flawless master plan. We are truly brilliant!]

Xia Wang’an agreed wholeheartedly. When the recorders approached her later to check in, she flashed them a deeply enigmatic smile:

“This plan is a secret, you know.”

The recorder was about to politely reply, “Ah, then never mind, you don’t need to tell us.”

The next second, however, the black-haired girl smoothly changed her tune: “लेकिन क्योंकि हम दोस्त हैं, इसलिए मैं तुम्हें बता देती हूँ।” -> “But since we’re friends, I’ll let you in on it.”

The recorders blinked in sheer astonishment: “Friends?”

Seeing their stunned expressions, Xia Wang’an proudly lifted her chin, puffing out her chest like a peacock trying to show off its radiant plumage:

“We’ve been chatting for so long, and you’ve all been so nice to me. Doesn’t that mean you want to be friends with me? I accept.”

The recorders were utterly flattered. Their official duty was simply to accompany and care for Xia Wang’an—in television drama terms, they were basically playing the role of high-ranking personal attendants.

Yet Xia Wang’an actually considered them friends?

This was the savior we’re talking about! The savior was actually willing to be friends with them!

“Yes, yes, yes! We absolutely want to be friends with you!” they chimed in, nodding frantically.

Xia Wang’an let out a quiet sigh of relief inside, feeling a mix of genuine happiness and slight guilt: [Ahem, alright, I guess we’re friends from now on.]

Yes, guilt.

Despite sounding like she had a sprawling social circle, the truth was she hadn’t made a single friend in nine whole years. After all, she was a powerhouse who hadn’t laid eyes on a living human being for three whole years.

Xia Wang’an vaguely recalled that her sixteen-year-old self back in the day used to have plenty of friends. But how exactly she had made those friends, she couldn’t quite remember anymore.

Even so, she always remembered one thing: having friends was a deeply joyful and blissful thing.

And now, she had friends again!

She solemnly promised the group: “I’ll treat you well. I won’t kill you.”

The recorders, who were still riding a high of pure joy: “……”

“Uh… thanks?”

Receiving their thanks, the young girl looked even happier.

In her mind, she was already mapping out future plans: once things settled down, they could sit around and chat about the best ways to slay feral beasts and malevolent entities (异种), roast the ones with particularly hideous faces, and whenever they ran into an exceptionally ugly and powerful fiend, she could drag it back as a souvenir for her friends to beat up for fun.

In this world, weren’t things like that called souvenirs?

— So thought Xia Wang’an, whose grasp of mundane common sense in her home world had grown somewhat hazy.

Before handing out souvenirs to her new friends, however, Xia Wang’an decided to share her [flawless master plan] of “beating people into believing I’m a cultivator” with them.

After listening to her grand strategy, the young recorder asked in a hesitant whisper: “Um… but what if you can’t beat them…?”

Xia Wang’an dismissed the concern with an airy wave of her hand, completely unfazed:

“If I can’t beat them, the worst that happens is I break a few arms and legs. After getting broken a few times, I’ll eventually be able to win.”

The recorders: “……”

Noticing their shell-shocked expressions, Xia Wang’an paused to offer some reassuring comfort:

“My physical wounds recover much faster than ordinary people’s, so don’t worry, I won’t die.”

Having her physical wounds heal significantly faster than a normal human’s was a setting Xia Wang’an had instituted when she transmigrated to her third world. Whether out of sheer muscle memory or sheer habit, she discovered upon her rebirth that the setting was still fully active.

Xia Wang’an looked rather smug: [Before I actually die, no matter how severe the injury is, it always patches itself up. I’ve tested it plenty of times.]

Musing for a moment, she tried to comfort her friends: [So you guys don’t need to worry at all. I’ll definitely save our world.]

The recorders fell silent.

Those words laid bare a grim reality: Xia Wang’an had endured countless brutal, near-fatal injuries during her decade roaming the catastrophic worlds.

They were well aware that although Xia Wang’an had spent ten grueling years drifting through apocalyptic planes, her internal psychological age remained firmly locked at sixteen.

In other words, whether in body or in mind, she was still just a sixteen-year-old child.

And yet, this child had casually prepared herself to face shattered bones and broken limbs, while turning around to comfort them—the adults—telling them not to worry because she would carry the weight of saving the world.

The young girl sat quietly on the sofa, her tender, youthful face radiating absolute confidence, patiently waiting for the customary expressions of gratitude: “We’re counting on you, everything rests on your shoulders now.”

Instead of praise or thanks, however, she suddenly felt a gentle, perfectly warm hand rest atop her head, giving it a soft, affectionate pat.

Xia Wang’an froze slightly.

She lifted her gaze, only to find the recorder standing before her, smiling warmly.

“Getting hurt might not kill you, but it still hurts, you know.”

“Wang’an, don’t worry. Even though we can only pack clothes for you on your first trip to another world, we can still work wonders with those clothes.”

“The state’s Materials Department is working around the clock right now. We might not have invented a brand-new miracle fabric yet, but Great Xia isn’t short on Star-Condensed tech capable of absorbing heavy kinetic impacts. We’ll pull out all the stops to prep you, so we can keep you from getting hurt in the first place.”

Xia Wang’an parted her lips, wanting to say, “It doesn’t hurt much anyway, I’m used to it by now,” but ultimately, she swallowed the words back down.

Perhaps it was because it had been a very, very long time since anyone had looked at her with such a gentle smile.

Perhaps it was because the hand resting on her head felt extraordinarily warm.

In the end, the young girl simply turned inward to brag to her personal system: [007, see? I told you coming home was a great idea! Look—the moment I get back, someone pats my head. You’ve never had your head patted before, have you?]

007: [Host, I don’t have a head.]

Xia Wang’an blinked, choosing to pretend she hadn’t heard that.

Whatever the recorders had reported upstream yielded results by the following morning, when Xia Wang’an was finally reunited with the friends she had cherished back in her sweet sixteen.

“Wang’an! You actually transmigrated and got reborn?! When I first heard the news, I thought I was dreaming—that’s so insanely cool! But tell me, did you suffer out there in those other worlds?! Look what I brought you! Pure drinking water! A whole mouthful’s worth! I swiped it straight from my old man just to bring it for you!”

This was Xia Wang’an’s wealthy-heiress best friend.

“Wang’an, you are so badass! I thought my awakening superpower was already top-tier, but you’re on a whole different level! You actually went hopping across parallel worlds! If this were a web novel, you’d be the undisputed protagonist!”

This was her chattering, underachieving deskmate friend.

“You’ve been through a lot.”

This was her childhood sweetheart friend whom she had grown up with side by side.

Xia Wang’an, who had always carried herself with effortless poise no matter the circumstance, was suddenly hit by a tidal wave of warm, overwhelming affection from her wealthy friend on the left and her underachieving friend on the right. For the very first time, she was entirely at a loss for words.

During her first year of transmigration, Xia Wang’an had spent virtually every waking moment yearning for her friends and missing her test papers. But gradually, as her collection of [Settings] piled up and her cognitive processes grew increasingly scrambled, many of those treasured memories had faded into the mists of her mind.

She could only faintly remember that she had friends, and that they must have been waiting for her to come home.

Now, however, here they stood, right in front of her. She vividly remembered their faces and the cadence of their voices, yet she couldn’t pull up their names.

Panic fluttered in Xia Wang’an’s chest as she scrambled mentally to fish the names out, but a thick barrier seemed to block access to her own memories.

“Wang’an.”

A handsome young man wearing the crisp white lab coat of the research institute stepped forward, extending a hand to lightly ruffle her hair: “Welcome home.”

Xia Wang’an stared at him in a daze, and in the next split second, his name slipped naturally from her lips: “Yuanning.”

The invisible wall blocking her memories shattered into pieces.

Yuanning was Xia Wang’an’s most important friend.

Both of them were orphans of fallen martyrs, having shared their early childhood years together in the same orphanage. They had attended the same primary, middle, and high schools. Until Yuanning—who was two years her senior—graduated and left for university, the two of them had practically never been separated.

To the young Xia Wang’an, Yuanning was an older brother, a close companion, and her most cherished family.

“I heard everything. You saved my life back then.”

Indeed, the little boy whom a two-year-old Xia Wang’an had saved by using her [Setting] ability was none other than Yuanning.

Yuanning smiled, ruffling Xia Wang’an’s hair just like he used to when they were kids: “You’re truly amazing, our Wang’an.”

While Xia Wang’an was still standing there in a daze, another head abruptly squeezed its way into her line of sight.

That head was vibrant green—dyed a shade of green as striking as expensive leafy greens.

Staring at the emerald-green hairdo, a name popped straight out of Xia Wang’an’s mouth: “Caicai.”

Cai Cai’s family owned the East District’s largest tech conglomerate. In an era where fresh vegetables were treated like priceless luxuries, her parents had named her Cai (Vegetable) in the hopeful wish that she would never lack for greens throughout her life.

Unfortunately, as edible food grew scarcer by the day, despite being a wealthy heiress, Cai Cai suffered a severe shortage of actual vegetables. The moment she turned sixteen, she celebrated by dyeing her entire head of hair a verdant, vegetable-green.

Though the exact same age as Xia Wang’an, her academic grades had always been a total disaster. Initially, she used to pester the school’s notorious top student with homework questions, and through constant question-asking, the two had blossomed into best friends.

“What is this, a family reunion?!” Cai Cai protested, shoving her way past. “Wang’an, how come you only shouted their names and left me hanging?”

The underachieving deskmate popped his head out from the right side as well. He hadn’t dyed his hair, but he wore a single earring on his left lobe, sporting thick brows and large eyes that gave him a fiercely cool aura.

That cool aura would have been a lot more convincing if his earring weren’t shaped like a steamed corn bun (wotou).

Xia Wang’an fixed her eyes on him: “Qiuzhuang, your earring looks really appetizing.”

Qiuzhuang’s face immediately lit up with a grin: “Right? I think so too! If you like it, I’ll give you one!”

“What’s so great about an earring? Step aside,” Cai Cai shoved Qiuzhuang out of the way, declaring grandly, “Wang’an, I’m going to give you a real steamed corn bun!”

“Hey, you just stepped on my new shoe!”

“Huh? Why is there a gugu beast crawling on your shoe?”

Cai Cai looked like she had just discovered a new continent: “Wang’an, look at his kicks!”

The gugu beast was a mutated beast known for its deceptively adorable appearance—resembling a fluffy little ball of fuzz. However, it wasn’t famous for being cute, but rather for being violently unpalatable.

Just how bad was it? To put it simply, even other mutated beasts refused to eat it.

Only starving humans driven to the ragged edge of death would resort to choking down a meal of gugu beast meat, even though it tasted so wretched it made people want to vomit blood.

Xia Wang’an glanced down. The distinct, fluffy icon of the world’s native gugu beast served as another grounding reminder that she had truly come home.

Her eyes lighting up, she reached out and pressed the service buzzer nearby.

The recorder—who had tactfully stepped outside to give them space without disturbing their reunion—knocked and pushed the door open, asking with a polite smile, “Wang’an, is there anything you need?”

It was completely normal for classmate Wang’an to want to play games, eat, and hang out with her childhood friends after missing them for ten whole years.

Xia Wang’an flashed him a cheerful smile: “I want hot pot.”

“Right away, we’ll arrange it instantly. We can pull fresh vegetables straight from the research labs—what kind of meat would you like?”

Cai Cai and Qiuzhuang’s eyes instantly lit up as they exchanged meaningful glances: Vegetables! It’s actual vegetables!

Just how precious were vegetables nowadays?! They were actually going to throw fresh greens into a hot pot! How could life possibly get any more luxurious?!

While the two of them were vibrating with excitement, Xia Wang’an declared at the top of her lungs with supreme anticipation:

“Gugu beast!”

The recorder: “……”

Cai Cai and Qiuzhuang: “……”

The recorder’s smiling face froze as he double-checked: “Gugu beast? You mean that meat that’s hard as a brick, tastes like sour, stringy, fishy leather, and breaks your teeth?”

Xia Wang’an nodded earnestly: “Mhm!”

The recorder: “……Alright, consider it arranged.”

Cai Cai stared at the departing recorder in utter horror: “Is he actually going to go find a gugu beast?! Oh my god! Gugu beast in a hot pot, cooked alongside fresh vegetables? What a monstrous waste of ingredients!!”

Qiuzhuang wore an expression of equal terror, his cool-guy facade completely shattered: “Ever since I ate a gugu beast once when I was seven, I finally understood why a creature with such pathetic combat power managed to avoid extinction.”

“Wang’an, have you seriously never eaten gugu beast before??”

Yuanning answered for her: “Wang’an and I ate gugu beast together when we were eight. I cried, and she cried too.”

“Then why on earth does Wang’an still want to eat it?!” Cai Cai interjected frantically. “Let me make this clear right now! I’m not eating it! Wild horses couldn’t drag me into eating a single bite!”

“Me neither!” Qiuzhuang echoed with a deeply tormented expression. “Ever since a gugu beast chipped one of my molars when I was seven, I swore a blood oath: I, Qiuzhuang, would rather starve to death than touch a single piece of gugu beast again in this lifetime!”

Half an hour later —

Watching Xia Wang’an happily stuffing her face with absolute bliss, and seeing Yuanning quietly eating beside her with flawless elegance and a serene expression:

Qiuzhuang nudged Cai Cai: “Do you think those two are just putting on an act to trick us into eating it with them?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them. Wang’an has a criminal record for this kind of thing.”

Cai Cai nodded in agreement, warning him: “Don’t fall for it.”

“Right!” Qiuzhuang steeled his resolve.

Five minutes later, watching Xia Wang’an sweep through the table like a hurricane with a terrifying momentum that threatened to lick the pot clean of every last morsel of meat, their self-restraint completely collapsed.

“You think… we should give it a try together?”

“Fine, together.”

Cautiously extending their chopsticks, the two of them each fished out a single slice of meat, popped it into their mouths, and began to chew.

The next second, their facial expressions distorted into masks of absolute agony.

“Aaaaaah!!!!!!”

Hearing a sudden shriek erupt from inside the room, the soldiers stationed at the door tensed instantly, their hands slamming onto the grips of their weapons.

“Stand down.” The veteran recorder standing nearby remained completely unruffled. Having lived through the peak famine years, he was remarkably unfazed: “They must have started eating the gugu meat.”

The soldier pushed the door open to find the two high schoolers chewing away in utter torment, exactly as predicted.

Even though it tasted like a culinary disaster, Cai Cai and Qiuzhuang had been drilled since childhood never to waste food. Thus, they could do nothing except shriek internally while heroically forcing the meat down.

“It’s so unspeakably awful, Wang’an—what on earth possessed you to eat gugu meat with such a joyful smile?”

Xia Wang’an, still cheerfully chewing away with a blissfully puffed-out cheek, answered naturally:

“Because you can’t get gugu meat in any of the other worlds.”

Though Xia Wang’an’s memories of many things had grown blurry, the uniquely atrocious flavor of gugu meat remained permanently etched into her brain. Whenever she felt homesick, she would mentally revisit that flavor.

Later on, she had sampled mutated beasts across virtually every corner of the multiverse, yet not a single beast possessed a distinctively wretched flavor profile quite like the gugu beast.

The young girl spoke around a mouthful of food, her voice slightly muffled but brimming with pure happiness:

“Back when I was stuck in other worlds, I couldn’t even eat it if I wanted to.”

“Ah……”

Cai Cai and Qiuzhuang were instantly hit by a wave of crushing guilt and heartache.

So it turned out that out there in the wider cosmos, Wang’an couldn’t even afford the luxury of eating something as wretched as gugu meat. Had they just been acting ungrateful? What if Wang’an felt insecure because of their pickiness?

Cai Cai stared down at the kaleidoscopic, brightly colored meat slices on the plate, gritted her teeth, and declared: “Wang’an! I’ll eat it with you!”

Qiuzhuang slammed his eyes shut in martyrdom: “Me too! You’re my friend, so whatever you love eating, I—I love eating it too!”

Taking a deep, trembling breath and holding their noses, they adopted the heroic posture of men marching to their execution, picked up another slice of meat, shoved it into their mouths, and forced themselves to chew.

Xia Wang’an beamed even brighter.

Having friends was truly wonderful. Everyone could sit around and enjoy gugu meat together.

Unlike her time in the other worlds.

With no friends around, she had been forced to eat braised pork belly, preserved mustard greens with pork, roasted beef legs, roasted mutton legs, and spicy rabbit heads all by herself—she couldn’t even catch a single hair of a gugu beast anywhere.

Together, the group polished off the entire hot pot, draining the broth down to the last drop. Everyone’s stomachs were round and bloated, and in perfect unison, they leaned back in their chairs, half-supporting their bellies with a groan.

“Hehe.”

Despite the agonizing chewing process earlier, Qiuzhuang perked right up the moment the meal ended: “The last time I was this full was… well, never.”

As the old saying goes, growing boys eat their parents out of house and home. At his age, Qiuzhuang was hitting his prime growth spurt, yet his daily food rations were strictly limited. Even though the nation squeezed out every possible grain to feed the minors, his daily diet at best capped out at eighty percent fullness.

Qiuzhuang patted his protruding belly: “If only we could eat this full every single day.”

Xia Wang’an patted her own belly in return: “I’ll bring food back from the other worlds for you.”

Given how enthusiastically Xia Wang’an had just devoured the gugu meat, Qiuzhuang maintained a polite thirty percent skepticism and a heavy seventy percent disbelief toward her claim.

Those other catastrophic worlds sounded like absolute hellscapes compared to their own.

Still, rather than bursting her bubble, he chose a far more subtle approach by quietly transferring all 1,098 points from his personal account balance directly to hers.

“Wang’an, take the points I saved up and go buy yourself some good food. Make sure you’re well-fed before you head out.”

Naturally, Cai Cai was on the exact same wavelength: “Wang’an, I’m going to pack food for you every single day starting now.”

Xia Wang’an didn’t fully understand why, but she gladly accepted her friends’ kindness with a bright, happy smile.

Yuanning tilted his head slightly and added quietly: “If you find a world with decent living conditions out there, you should buy a house. Settling down there might not be a bad backup plan.”

Xia Wang’an shook her head: “You can’t settle down permanently in other worlds. I’ve tested it—I’m the only one who can bypass the world barrier to stay indefinitely. If anyone else goes, they’re forced to return to our home world after three months.”

“Director Fan says it’s a bit like a peacetime national visa.”

If not for this limitation, the state’s current master plan wouldn’t be [accumulating 10 billion Faith Power], but rather scouting out a relatively peaceful world to launch an [All-Citizen Migration Plan].

Looking at the young girl’s crystal-clear eyes, Yuanning swallowed back the words resting on the tip of his tongue: What I meant was… if our world is truly doomed, you need to find a way to live a good life out there.

At that exact moment, in that same conference room, among the exact same group of people.

The Chief had managed a mere three hours of sleep, leaving her eyes heavily bloodshot.

“The Ability Research Institute deployed questionnaires nationwide and finally tracked down an ability awakener who retained memories prior to the temporal reversal. After discussing it amongst ourselves, we’ve decided to declassify the findings for everyone.”

He waved his hand, transmitting the questionnaire files to everyone present.

After a brief, suffocating silence, the conference room erupted into a wave of voices.

“Th-This is impossible!”

“A whole year of continuous meteor showers? That’s not something running underground can save us from…”

As they read further, the murmurs gradually faded until absolute silence reclaimed the room.

[In my memory, everywhere was a wasteland. People didn’t just have to dodge meteors; they had to fight feral fiends and monsters (异种). Toward the end, every single electrical appliance on Blue Star suddenly fried out. Stripped of technological support, the death toll skyrocketed, mutant beasts nearly died off entirely, and humanity’s staple food devolved into gugu beasts.]

[The meteor showers stopped abruptly, but the next second, the sky went black. When we looked up, we saw pitch-darkness. As they drew closer, people realized those weren’t rocks—they were chunks of debris larger than entire cities.]

[That wasn’t even the scariest part. The scariest part was when a star appeared, slowly creeping into our view, growing bigger and clearer by the second, until we understood what we were looking at: an entire planetary body was on a collision course with us.]

[In the end, I watched it fill up our entire sky.]

An oppressive, suffocating stillness blanketed the conference room.

It was a long, agonizing time before someone muttered unsteadily:

“Planetary impact……”

“So that’s how our world was destroyed.”

So thoroughly… hopeless.

If crops refused to grow, they could brainstorm ways to synthesize substitute foods or squeeze alternative resources for sustenance.

If temperatures swung to deadly extremes of heat or cold, they could build reinforced micro-environments in advance.

If floods struck, they could start building arks right now.

Yet out of all possible disasters, it had to be a planetary collision.

And right before the impact, a year-long barrage of meteor showers would systematically shred the surface and shatter all technological infrastructure, stripping them of even the fragile hope of mounting a technological defense.

“Doesn’t that mean we’re just waiting to die?” someone finally voiced out loud.

“No.”

The Chief gave a light cough, her gaze burning with unyielding resolve: “We still have the [Salvation] plan.”

“We still… have a chance.”

“Considering that you’ll enter your first world completely devoid of baseline powers, as the Director of the Ability Management Bureau, I’m stepping up as your personal coach to train you and drill into you how to protect yourself when things go south.”

A burly man built like a grizzly bear thumped his massive chest: “My name is Zheng Shanhe. You can just call me Director Zheng directly. If you’ve got any questions down the line, throw them at me—I’ll answer every single one.”

“Understood, Director Zheng.”

Xia Wang’an blinked: “Why do you have so little hair? Is it because you had to step outside three times while saying those two sentences just now?”

Zheng Shanhe—who had achieved premature male-pattern baldness at the ripe young age of forty—sat frozen: “……”

“You actually noticed I stepped out mid-sentence? Not bad, shows you’ve got sharp observational skills. My superpower is [Speed]; ordinarily, people can’t even catch when I slip away while talking.”

“I just dashed out for a second to supervise the training camp next door. But since you spotted it, I won’t run off while talking to you next time.”

“Alright, that question’s answered. Fire away if you’ve got another.”

Xia Wang’an: “You still didn’t answer the hair question……”

Mid-sentence, noticing the man lunging toward her with a sudden, predatory grab, her gaze turned razor-sharp. She dipped her waist, drew her blade—wait, where was her 2.8-meter-long broadsword?!

In the next split second, Xia Wang’an found herself hoisted cleanly into the air by the scruff of her collar.

“Ho, not bad! You actually managed to dodge my opening strike. The little punks next door don’t even twitch when I hoist them up like this.” Standing two meters and forty centimeters tall, Zheng Shanhe hauled sixteen-year-old Xia Wang’an around as effortlessly as if she were a gugu beast.

He dangled the young girl by the collar, chuckling: “Pity, your reflexes are fast, but they aren’t faster than my [Speed] power. Don’t worry, I’m going to whip you into shape.”

Dangling mid-air, Xia Wang’an maintained a completely deadpan expression.

As everyone knew, classmate Xia Wang’an—who had maintained the rank of number one in her grade from childhood onward—possessed a fiercely competitive streak:

“If I had been holding my blade just now, that exact angle would have been just right to slice your head clean off.”

The giant man laughed in amusement: “Your sword’s that long? How many meters?”

Xia Wang’an corrected him flatly: “Two point eight meters.”

“Impressive.” Zheng Shanhe set her down on her feet, looking at her with a newfound sense of respect: “You’re only what, one meter six tall? And you can actually swing a 2.8-meter weapon?”

Xia Wang’an corrected him again: “One meter sixty-three.”

“Close enough, close enough. So where’s this 2.8-meter broadsword of yours?” Zheng Shanhe let out a booming laugh that made him sound even more like a bear: “Let old uncle take a peek, eh?”

Xia Wang’an opened her palm, revealing a slender wooden hairpin resembling a Miao-style sabre resting quietly in the center of her hand.

Zheng Shanhe squinted closely at the wooden trinket, which barely measured twenty centimeters: “This is it?”

Xia Wang’an pinned the wooden hairpin into her hair: “Insufficient Faith Power. Once my Faith Power is high enough, it’ll transform back.”

As the director of the Ability Management Bureau, Zheng Shanhe had witnessed all sorts of bizarre and eccentric powers. Accepting the premise that “a simple hairpin can turn into a 2.8-meter broadsword” didn’t phase him in the slightest.

Grinning widely, he rubbed his calloused palms together: “Deal! Once your sword comes back, make sure to show it to me.”

“Alright, enough chit-chat, time for training! Let me test out your raw combat instincts!”

Xia Wang’an desperately wanted to remind him that he still hadn’t answered her question about his hair.

However, since Zheng Shanhe had already launched his probing strike, she reluctantly shelved the thought, planning to resume the inquiry once training concluded.

The first round of training ended in under a minute.

Instead of getting her arms locked into a helpless immobilization hold as Zheng Shanhe moved in, the young girl executed a fluid counter-twist, leveraging his own momentum.

CRACK.

With a sickening sound of fracturing bone, Xia Wang’an’s arm snapped into a grotesquely twisted angle. Using the injury to slip past his lockdown, she whipped her leg around in a vicious kick targeting his neck.

“Holy sh—!”

Zheng Shanhe’s [Speed] power let him blurt out those two syllables at supersonic velocity.

Dodging the kick by a hair’s breadth, he stumbled backward two paces: “Stop, stop, stop!”

“Are you alright?! Damn it, damn it—MEDIC!!!”

In that instant, his brain short-circuited entirely. Every rational thought vanished, leaving only a single sentence playing on an endless loop in his skull:

I just broke the savior’s arm!I broke it!!It’s broken

!!!

Xia Wang’an couldn’t fathom why he had called a halt, but judging that he wasn’t an enemy or a feral entity, but rather her designated coach, she obediently halted her rushing advance.

Standing still, she lowered her gaze to inspect her completely mangled, dislocated arm. With a casual twist and two loud pop-crack sounds, the arm snapped itself back into place as she moved it.

The on-call medic who had just sprinted into the room joined Zheng Shanhe in a synchronized chorus of “Holy crap, holy crap.”

Conversely, Xia Wang’an looked thoroughly bewildered: “Didn’t you guys know my injury regeneration speed is faster than normal people’s?”

Zheng Shanhe: “I knew… but I never imagined you’d actually get hurt using my moves……”

“Let me see, let me see!” The medic sprinted forward like an Olympic sprinter, grabbed Xia Wang’an’s arm, and inspected it top and bottom: “How does it feel right now? Any pain, any itching? Oh god, we need to run a CT scan immediately, I’m filing the paperwork right now.”

While examining her frantically, he didn’t forget to throw a roar over his shoulder: “Director Zheng! What the hell are you doing?! How did you manage to get this kid this badly hurt in under a minute?!”

“I, I……” Even with his extensive experience dealing with volatile ability awakeners, Zheng Shanhe found himself completely unable to defend himself. He swore on his life he hadn’t used any real force; as the bureau director, he always maintained strict proportions when sparring. But his sense of proportion hadn’t accounted for the fact that the girl would deliberately self-inflict a compound fracture just to slip out of his grip.

“It’s not his fault,” Xia Wang’an piped up promptly. “I broke it myself. That’s just part of my offensive technique.”

The medic experienced a severe blow to his twenty-year medical career:

“Your offensive technique is snapping your own arm in half??”

“Not always.”

The medic let out a microscopic sigh of relief.

Then he heard Xia Wang’an cheerfully continue: “Sometimes, hacking it off completely is much faster. You know, like when a mutant beast clamps its jaws around your arm or something.”

The medic: “……”

Zheng Shanhe: “……”

Completely oblivious to the facial expressions of the two men, Xia Wang’an was mentally replaying the spar from start to finish.

A look of mild disappointment crossed her face as her eyes drifted back toward Zheng Shanhe’s neck:

“If only my blade was here. Otherwise, I could have chopped off my own hand first, and then chopped off your head.”

“That combo is super efficient, I guarantee you wouldn’t see it coming!”

The medic: “……”

Zheng Shanhe: “……”

With her arm fully restored, Xia Wang’an rotated her shoulder and locked into a fierce, ambition-fueled fighting stance:

“Again! This time you won’t block me!”

Zheng Shanhe walked over, staring down at her as Xia Wang’an glared up at him with unshakeable confidence.

Before she could strike, the grizzly-bear man grabbed her by the scruff of her neck once more, hoisting her back up into mid-air.

“Let’s switch to theory class first. Lesson one: How to keep yourself alive in combat.”

Xia Wang’an kicked her legs stubbornly in mid-air: “I don’t need to keep myself alive! My regeneration is fast! I’m invincible!”

“Does it hurt or not?”

Xia Wang’an paused for a single second before puffing her chest out defiantly: “Mere pain is nothing to me!”

“If it hurts, you learn.”

“I won’t! I’m already used to it! Put me down, you’re only catching me because of your speed power! Once my Faith Power is back, I can take ten of you with one hand!”

In response, a massive palm covered in rough calluses—larger than her entire head—descended to ruffle her hair into total chaos.

Xia Wang’an froze.

Above her, the grizzly-bear man’s deep, rumbling voice echoed:

“You little brat, stubborn as a mule. Pain is pain, how can anyone ever ‘get used’ to it? But I get it—at your age, you’ve all got that chuunibyou streak. Be a good kid, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Xia Wang’an’s gaze drifted into a momentary blur.

Way back when she had first arrived in those desolate alternate worlds, she had cried from the pain. Before she manufactured 007, whenever the agony grew too intense, she would curl up alone in a strange world, hugging her knees and weeping as she wished to go home.

Sixteen-year-old high schoolers were intimately familiar with crying.

In her memories, whenever she cried, Director Auntie, her teachers, her classmates, Yuanning, Cai Cai, Qiuzhuang, or even random uncles and aunts passing by would cluster around her to offer comfort and find ways to cheer her up.

Just like Zheng Shanhe was doing right now.

“Come on, I’ll go brew you some sugar water. That’s my personal stash—I only pull out the special treats when you kids get banged up. Drink my sugar water, and pay attention in class, got it?”

As Zheng Shanhe spoke, he noticed that the young girl who had been thrashing around like a gugu beast had suddenly gone dead quiet, dangling from his grip with surprising docility.

He chuckled, unable to resist giving her mop of hair another affectionate ruffle.

Which completely wrecked Xia Wang’an’s hairstyle into a bird’s nest—

Noticing Xia Wang’an staring up at him with clear, blank eyes amidst a crown of messy hair, the director coughed sheepishly and retracted his hand: “Ahem, let’s go!”

He hauled Xia Wang’an away, leaving the abandoned medic standing frozen in place as sudden realization struck him.

“The CT scan!! We need to check if the kid’s bones grew back crooked!!!!”

[007, coming home is truly wonderful.]

Dangling comfortably as she was carted away, Xia Wang’an swung her legs happily through the air, bragging to her personal system: [Look, when I’m home, I don’t even have to walk.]

007 cheered along: [That’s right, host! No wonder you’ve always wanted to come home!]

Xia Wang’an: [There are people at home, there are new friends, there’s Yuanning, Cai Cai, Qiuzhuang, Director Zheng, and the medic. I like them.]

She reached a firm verdict: [I’m going to chat with them a lot more.]

007 raised both hands in support, despite lacking hands: [You got it, host! You can start chatting with Director Zheng right now!]

Pondering for a moment, Xia Wang’an fished for an engaging and appropriate conversation starter.

Dangling obediently from the grizzly-bear man’s grip, the young girl adjusted her posture, looked up toward him, and asked brightly:

“Director Zheng, let’s pick up where we left off earlier.”

“So… why do you have so little hair?”