Walking down the street, Li Mu was in an exceptionally good mood.
Although he had nearly been suffocated by Eden's hug earlier, he had secured the money he needed. The funding issue was completely resolved.
Now he could focus on building MEI Corp and completing the Check-In missions.
He arrived at MEI's home quickly and excitedly elbowed the door open.
"MEI! We're rich now!"
However, unlike the usual solitary welcome from MEI, this time he found someone unexpected yet entirely logical sitting in his living room.
A young girl with white hair and blue eyes was sitting quietly on the sofa.
—It was his best bro, KevinKiana.
At this moment, she looked a bit flustered upon seeing Li Mu, disguised as Ryoma, return home.
Just then, MEI walked out of the kitchen wearing an apron and holding an empty plate.
Seeing Li Mu, she explained:
"Father, this is my classmate Kiana. She helps me a lot at school, so I thought I'd invite her over for dinner."
Then, turning to Kiana, she said, "Kiana, this is..."
Before MEI could finish, Li Mu cut in.
"Oh my, this young lady looks familiar, doesn't she?"
Facing the confused expressions of both MEI and Kiana, Li Mu walked up to Kiana with a smile, looking her up and down.
Kiana instantly stood up, looking extremely nervous in front of this man.
Although MEI's father had a smile that was as warm as a spring breeze, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was a hint of mischief hiding behind it.
"H-Hello... sir?" Kiana replied awkwardly.
Li Mu pretended to scrutinize her, then asked, "What is your relationship with Siegfried?"
Kiana answered instinctively, "That's my father..."
The moment she said it, she realized she messed up.
If MEI's father knew her dad, he would definitely know that Siegfried only had a son.
Sure enough, after she spoke, she saw MEI's father's face turn cold.
"Niece, I've been friends with your father Siegfried for many years. I never expected him to do such a thing!"
"Huh?"
"Don't worry. I know it's not your fault. It's that bastard Siegfried!" Li Mu feigned anger. "Next time I see him, I'm definitely going to punch him in the face!"
"To think he'd cheat on Cecilia and have an affair! This is a betrayal of pure love!"
"Huh?"
Seeing Li Mu's sudden outburst of rage, Kiana frantically tried to explain, "You've got it wrong! I'm not his illegitimate daughter!"
eventually, after Kiana spun a clumsy, full-of-holes story about "family darkness," Li Mu pretended to "believe" that she was actually Siegfried and Cecilia's daughter who had been hidden away due to internal family struggles.
The two sat opposite each other on the sofa, chatting while waiting for MEI to finish cooking.
Looking at the man she was supposedly meeting for the first time, Kiana had a strange feeling—a sense of familiarity, as if she had met him somewhere before.
"Be a good girl, Niece. Call me Uncle."
The ahoge on top of Kiana's head suddenly twitched. She stared blankly at Li Mu, suspicion written on her face.
Although based on seniority, calling him "Uncle" was normal, for some reason, her gut told her that if she agreed, she would be submitting to him in some weird way. It felt incredibly annoying.
Just as she was pondering how to reply, MEI's timely appearance saved her. She brought out the food.
Kiana breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the meal MEI had prepared.
Earlier today, she had run into MEI at Eden's concert. Then the incident happened, and Eden was kidnapped by bandits.
After being checked and cleared, the audience was released.
She had planned to go home after the concert, but she got chatting with MEI, and one thing led to another. Before she knew it, she had agreed to come over for dinner.
Seeing MEI's confident demeanor, her cooking couldn't be bad, right?
Regarding this, Li Mu's answer would be: One meal earns 10 Crystals. It's delicious.
This month alone, just by eating MEI's cooking three times a day, he had earned nearly 1000 Crystals. It was no exaggeration to say that while he was ostensibly MEI's father, in reality, MEI was his sugar daddy!
Crystals were crucial. They determined the fate of the entire Previous Era.
Li Mu never forgot the impending Third Eruption. The Third Eruption of the Previous Era caused far more devastation than the Current Era's, engulfing the entire East Asia region and causing hundreds of millions of casualties.
To stop this disaster, he either had to kill the Herrscher of Thunder the moment it was born...
Or, he had a more viable plan: replace it with a controllable Herrscher who retained their humanity.
And coincidentally, Li Mu knew how to obtain a Herrscher not controlled by the Cocoon of Finality.
He looked at his System panel.
[Origin and Finality - Prologue: Escape from Nagazora]
[Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card]
[Status: Incomplete]
In the stage rewards for the main storyline, completing all Check-In missions for a chapter would grant a Stage Reward—Character Cards for all thirteen Herrschers, including the Herrscher of Finality.
But this was where the downside of bugging the System to open 50,000 years early showed up.
If the System had opened 50,000 years later, he could have just followed the main plot, waited for Raiden Mei to awaken and nuke Nagazora, then Check-In and get the Herrscher of Thunder card.
But this was the Previous Era. MEI didn't have a Herrscher Gem inside her, and the Cocoon of Finality's choice for the Herrscher was uncertain. To complete the mission, MEI had to obtain the power of the Herrscher of Thunder and inherit Raiden Mei's fate.
Li Mu's idea was to directly load the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto MEI, bypassing the Cocoon of Finality's mechanism and effectively replacing the Herrscher of Thunder for this era.
But the problem was: to get the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card, he had to complete the stage mission first.
And to complete the stage mission, he had to load the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto MEI.
It was a classic deadlock.
However, there is always a way out. As long as he wanted to walk, the path was beneath his feet!
He actually found a solution in the System Shop.
[Herrscher Trial Card (Thunder)]
[Price: 3000 Crystals / 30 Minutes]
The shop sold Trial Cards for all Herrschers except Origin and Finality. The complete Character Cards only unlocked after completing the stage missions.
Seeing this item, Li Mu knew he had won.
Time limit? Was the time limit important? Not at all!
Even if it was thirty seconds, while active, the user was a genuine Herrscher, qualified to directly connect with the Cocoon of Finality.
Hypothetically speaking...
The moment the Cocoon of Finality selected a Herrscher, he could activate the Trial Card, letting MEI snatch the position and the authority.
When the Trial Card expired, the System-granted position and authority would vanish. But the position and authority stolen from the Cocoon would remain. MEI would still be a Herrscher.
At that point, would the Cocoon just grit its teeth and accept it? Or would it petty enough to take the authority back?
The answer was obvious. The Cocoon of Finality was just like this broken System—a rigid, inflexible idiot!
"In that case, the Cocoon of Finality will just have to suck it up."
However, becoming a Herrscher was just the start. There was a more critical issue to resolve: how to give the Herrscher humanity.
Herrschers in this era didn't have the "Ego" factor. They were emotionless Honkai weapons. If this wasn't resolved, humanity would get elbow-dropped by Herrscher MEI.
That image... tsk.
So how to solve it? The answer, of course, was to turn Elysia into soup (lol).
Just kidding. As the director of this play, Li Mu didn't like dark, edgy tragedies.
If possible, he would strive to weave a healthy, sunny, positive, and joyful Happy Ending.
So, back to the question: how to give the Herrscher humanity?
The answer lay in timing. He would time the usurpation of the Herrscher authority right at the end of the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] Check-In mission.
Within the thirty minutes the Trial Card was active, he would speedrun through the plot points: [Kiana vs. Mei: First Rooftop Battle], [Encounter with Bronya], and [Hyperion Descends]. This would complete the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] Check-In, granting him the [Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card].
Once he had the Character Card, before the thirty-minute Trial Card expired, he would equip the permanent Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto MEI.
Thus, a Herrscher of Thunder with humanity would be born.
Essentially, he was scamming the Cocoon of Finality and then scamming the System. A perfect closed loop.
Now that the funds for MEI Corp were secured, the next step was to build the company and complete the Check-In.
And the construction of St. Freya needed to be put on the agenda as well...
Soon, MEI finished serving the dishes, and the three of them sat down.
Looking at the food on the table—not lavish, but certainly not shabby, and smelling delicious—Kiana nodded secretly.
The presentation was great, it looked appetizing, so the taste surely couldn't be bad.
But Li Mu knew better. The more colorful the mushroom, the more poisonous it is.
His heart trembled slightly. He sighed silently, forcing his fingers to pick up his chopsticks.
Whether hundreds of millions of people in East Asia survived the upcoming Great Eruption depended on whether he could save enough Crystals in time. And right now, the biggest source of Crystals was MEI's cooking.
So, having MEI was like having the strength of a hundred men!
He picked up a piece of tofu with his chopsticks. The moment it hit his stomach, Li Mu felt his stomach convulse, as if someone had punched him in the gut.
But his expression remained unchanged as he shoved food into his mouth.
Having eaten MEI's cooking for so many days, he hadn't made zero progress. At least his resistance had increased significantly.
But perhaps his encouragement had worked too well. MEI had become increasingly interested in honing her culinary skills recently.
Good news: her cooking skills had improved.
Bad news: they improved in the wrong direction.
As he ate, tears streamed down Li Mu's face.
"Father, why are you crying?"
"It's... it's just too delicious."
Kiana looked at Li Mu, who was wearing a blissful expression like a mob character in a cooking anime.
Is it really that good? Anticipation rose in her heart.
Kiana used a spoon to scoop up a piece of white, jade-like tofu and put it in her mouth.
Chew. Chew. Chew.
Kiana's body froze. The hand holding the spoon began to tremble uncontrollably.
Clatter!
The spoon dropped to the floor.
Then, she fell straight backward.
Thud!
Kiana collapsed on the floor, unconscious.
Swirls appeared in her eyes, and a mochi-like soul seemed to drift out of her mouth.
"Kiana-san!!!"