Honkai Impact: My VR Harem is Real — Chapter 200

Chapter 200: Sword Heart Mantra

“It’s getting late,” Lin Chaoyu said, her voice carrying a gentle, soothing cadence. “Go bathe first and rest here for the night. Tomorrow, I will teach you the Sword Heart Mantra.”

Su Mei remained completely silent, her gaze downcast, while Rovel simply offered a polite nod.

“Ah, by the way, I haven’t caught your names yet,” Lin Chaoyu added, blinking as if the thought had just struck her. “I am Lin Chaoyu. ‘Lin’as in the forest, and’Chaoyu’ from the poem—the morning sun rises in the west, and throughout the morning it rains.”

Rovel stepped forward slightly. “I am Fang Ruobai.”

“Fang Ruobai… I see. I’ll remember that.” She offered a warm smile, then shifted her attention back to the quiet girl beside him.

Su Mei kept her lips tightly sealed. The heavy, suffocating grief of her mother’s recent death still clung to her small frame like a physical weight.

Lin Chaoyu didn’t press the issue. Her expression softened with understanding as she turned and retrieved two sets of neatly folded clean clothes. “There are several natural hot springs in the back mountain,” she explained. “I’ll take you both there to wash up first.”

Lin Chaoyu gently took Su Mei’s hand, leading the way. Rovel trailed beside them, his sharp eyes sweeping over the surrounding scenery.

Despite being high up on a secluded mountain peak, the night was far from pitch-black. Tall, elegant streetlights lined the stone pathways, casting a steady, artificial glow over the ancient architecture.

Wait. Streetlights. Not paper lanterns.

Rovel narrowed his eyes, inspecting the sleek fixtures. If his senses weren’t completely deceiving him… those were definitely solar panels mounted on top.

For a long moment, he just stared. He didn’t even know where to begin unpacking that absurdity.

Well, he mused dryly, I suppose this is the residence of an Immortal. When you factor in millennia of accumulated knowledge, advanced eco-friendly lighting actually makes perfect sense.

The three soon arrived at the terraced natural hot springs, steam curling lazily into the cool night air.

“I’ll take the lower pool,” Rovel announced, consciously giving the girls their privacy as he headed down the stone steps.

The water carried the faint, earthy fragrance of natural minerals. Stripping off his travel-worn clothes, Rovel slipped into the steaming basin. The initial bite of heat quickly melted away, replaced by a deep, seeping warmth that relaxed his tense muscles.

Leaning back against the smooth rocks, he stared up at the starry sky, mapping out his next moves.

Based on the current timeline, he had just arrived at Taixu Mountain alongside Su Mei. That meant there were still over ten years before the infamous master-slaying incident.

No wonder the system labeled this a long-term dungeon, he thought, splashing a handful of water over his face. A decade is an eternity.

Worse still, his physical body had regressed to that of a seven-year-old. He could still feel the three types of Sword Intent he had previously comprehended humming quietly in his mind, but his raw physical strength and Stigmata were completely sealed. Even the Xuanyuan Sword was locked out of his inventory. He had specifically waited for his real-world body to fully recover before diving into this dungeon, only to find out it was a total immersion scenario.

A slight miscalculation on his part.

Still, his objective remained clear. If possible, he was going to rewrite the tragic ending of the Seven Swords of Mount Taixu.

He refused to waste mental energy on pointless hypotheticals like, If I knew she was Su Mei from the beginning, would I still have stepped in to save her?

For Rovel, second-guessing the past only led to unnecessary exhaustion. He had wanted to save her in that moment, so he did. It was that simple.

After soaking until his thoughts began to blur and his head felt heavy from the heat, Rovel finally climbed out. He dried off, pulled on the fresh clothes Lin Chaoyu had provided, and handled the stone path back to Fuyun Temple ahead of the girls.

Since I’m stuck here, I might as well get some sleep, he decided, tossing himself onto the simple bed. Worrying about changing destiny was pointless right now; in this tiny, unawakened body, his power was practically nonexistent.

The following day, Rovel woke up long before dawn.

The early morning air of Taixu Mountain carried a sharp, biting chill. With sleep completely banished from his mind and nothing else to occupy his time, he wandered out of his room to explore the temple grounds.

Before long, the crisp, rhythmic sound of air being violently displaced reached his ears.

Following the sharp sound of physical strikes, Rovel found himself outside the main courtyard. There, moving with stunning precision, was Red Kite, practicing her martial arts.

Thousands of years, repeating the exact same routine day after day? Rovel watched from the shadows, a deep sense of awe washing over him. That level of discipline is terrifying.

With nothing better to do, he found a quiet spot on the stone steps, sat down, and simply observed her forms.

Judging by the timeline, this had to be Red Kite in her absolute strongest state outside of an Active Honkai Reaction. Both her martial prowess and her physical vessel were at their absolute, unblemished peak. Possessing a flawless Sword Heart and an uninjured body, she could unleash the Taixu Sword God effortlessly, without needing to burn the feathers of Fenghuang Down.

Rovel inhaled sharply. If the six-core Sirin had run into the Immortal during this era, the Herrscher of the Void would have been beaten until she cried for her mother.

Every single movement Red Kite made carried a captivating, lethal grace, perfectly blending absolute hardness with flowing softness. The sheer kinetic force of her strikes generated an invisible vortex, sweeping the fallen autumn leaves into the air until they formed a perfect, swirling Taiji pattern around her center.

Suddenly, Red Kite halted her stance. The leaves drifted harmlessly back to the earth. She turned her piercing gaze directly toward Rovel.

“Why did you wake so early?” she asked, her voice calm and measured.

“Because I went to sleep early last night,” Rovel replied simply, offering a faint shrug.

“In that case, I will teach you the Sword Heart Mantra first.”

Red Kite didn’t waste a single breath on small talk. She immediately transitioned into the role of a master.

“Alright,” Rovel agreed, straightening his posture.

The Sword Heart Mantra consisted of a series of bizarre, ancient syllables. There were exactly four hundred and sixty-two sounds, none of which had ever been committed to written record.

The sounds themselves held no linguistic meaning. Their true wonder lay in the psychological resonance they created. By reciting, meditating upon, and internally listening to these specific frequencies, a practitioner could literally temper their own mind.

At its core, Rovel knew the truth: this mantra was actually the Divine Sound, a direct derivative of Aponia’s Discipline.

Aponia’s Discipline operated like a terrifyingly enhanced, reality-warping version of psychological suggestion. It was a mental command so absolute it could rival the most extreme forms of hypnosis. Almost no living creature could resist its influence; even Kevin, immediately after ascending as a MANTIS, had been unable to withstand its absolute authority. Only a singular, impossible existence like Elysia possessed immunity.

But Discipline was far more than a simple mind-control trick. Depending on the specific parameters set by the user, its final manifestation wasn’t just a mental barrier restricting a person’s actions. It could actively rewrite and influence physical functions.

Within the theoretical limits of human biology, once a Discipline locked onto a specific directive, it could force the target’s body to evolve toward that absolute extreme. For instance, if a Discipline commanded a soldier to survive, that individual’s cellular regeneration and physical recovery rates would skyrocket to superhuman levels. Naturally, it couldn’t force a baseline human to spontaneously sprout wings and fly, but it pushed human potential to its absolute breaking point.

Divine Sound was the refined byproduct of this power—a version of Discipline that functioned independently, removing Aponia as the active regulator. It served to forcibly harmonize human consciousness with the physical vessel, accelerating biological growth and mutating the body to better adapt to Honkai Energy.

That was the true reason the Sword Heart Mantra granted people superhuman strength.

Rovel closed his eyes, centering his breathing as he listened intently to Red Kite reciting the mantra.

“Mou ka ba yi si liu…”

Her voice carried a strange, vibrating cadence that seemed to echo directly inside his skull. He focused entirely on the rhythm, the pitch, and the exact sequence.

By the time the final syllable faded into the crisp morning air, Rovel had perfectly etched the entire sequence into his memory.

“Thank you, Perfected Red Kite,” Rovel said, opening his eyes and offering a respectful nod. “I have memorized it.”

“…Recite it once for me to hear,” Red Kite replied after a brief, skeptical silence.

Clearly, she suspected the young boy was just boasting and wanted to verify his claim to correct his inevitable mistakes.

Without missing a beat, Rovel repeated the four hundred and sixty-two syllables, matching her exact pitch and cadence flawlessly.

Listening to the perfect replication of her own teaching, Red Kite’s stoic expression didn’t change, but she offered no further corrections.

“Youth is the optimal time to temper the Sword Heart,” she instructed, her tone shifting into a serious warning. “The earlier one begins, the purer the heart becomes. For an adult to attempt cultivating the Sword Heart is akin to trying to catch the wind with bare hands—it is an exercise in futility. But understand this… even if your Sword Heart reaches mastery, it demands a lifetime of continuous tempering. A single moment of hesitation, a single crack in your resolve, and the Sword Heart will shatter.”

“I understand,” Rovel replied, fully aware of that fatal limitation.

Internally, however, a seed of doubt took root. Could he actually cultivate a pure Sword Heart? His physical vessel might be seven years old, but his true consciousness was entirely adult.