Honkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 76

Chapter 76: Real Men Never Look Back at Explosions

“We only need to lure the last few Puppet Soldiers over, and this farce can finally come to an end.”

The Cloth Artisan hovered in the hazy air, Aglaea’s voice projecting from within its hollow frame with absolute tranquility.

“After that, you can enter the net I have prepared.”

Down in the ruined streets, Mo Chenfeng felt as though someone had shoved a handful of burning sand straight down his windpipe. Every ragged breath dragged a thick, metallic taste of copper up the back of his throat. He forced his leaden legs forward, desperately chasing the floating silhouette ahead of him.

Hearing the puppet speak, the muscles in his dust-caked face twitched. His expression twisted into a grimace that looked infinitely more tragic than outright weeping.

“Finally… is it finally over?”

This high-intensity sprint had dragged on for a grueling thirty minutes. If it were not for his wind-element Ability constantly swirling around his ankles to strip away his body weight, combined with the baseline physical enhancements of an awakened user and the stamina forged from years of sprinting up apartment stairs to deliver packages… he would have collapsed into a lifeless heap twenty minutes ago.

Mo Chenfeng skidded to a halt. He braced his hands against his knees and gasped for oxygen, heavy drops of sweat sliding down the tip of his nose to splatter against the shattered bricks below.

“Where are the rest of them… right now?” he asked between heaving breaths, his bloodshot eyes darting across the desolate surroundings.

The wind howled through the jagged gaps in the concrete ruins, sounding like a dying beast.

“Just a short distance directly ahead of you.” The Cloth Artisan slowly rotated in the air. The featureless space where its head should be locked onto Mo Chenfeng. “However, please ensure you are careful. The remaining Puppet Soldiers seem to possess rather volatile tempers.”

“Careful? Volatile?!”

Mo Chenfeng snapped his head up, his eyes bulging wide. In all the times they had lured these monsters today, this terrifying woman named Aglaea had never once used the word careful. Even when surrounded by dozens of mechanical monstrosities, her tone had remained impossibly serene.

This time…

Before his exhausted brain could process the warning, an unnatural distortion in the airflow slammed into his sensory net. The previously steady wind fractured, turning chaotic and violent as if a massive force had just ripped the atmosphere apart.

The sensation sent a violent jolt down his spine. Every hair on his body stood on end.

He had no time to think. Survival instincts hijacked his nervous system. He threw himself sideways in a desperate lunge, crashing through the rotting wooden frame of a ground-floor window and rolling hard into the darkness of the abandoned building.

A split second later.

BOOM!

A heavy rocket, trailing a blinding tail of exhaust fire, tore through the thick mist. It ripped straight through the exact coordinate where Mo Chenfeng had just been standing and slammed into the reinforced concrete wall across the street.

Crimson flames erupted into the gray sky. A massive shockwave of expanding heat and jagged shrapnel instantly scoured the entire avenue, vaporizing the debris in its path.

Mo Chenfeng poked his head over the shattered windowsill, coughing up a lungful of plaster dust. He stared at the massive, smoking crater glowing orange in the asphalt. His lips trembled so violently he could barely form words.

“I am going to die. I am actually going to die.”

He scrambled out of the ruined structure on all fours, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. How in the world did that count as a volatile temper? That thing was trying to erase him from the census!

He snapped his gaze toward the trajectory of the rocket.

The smoke parted. A hulking Puppet Soldier stood at the far end of the intersection. It rested a smoking, man-portable rocket launcher on its massive shoulder. Its hollow, mechanical optical sensors were locked dead onto Mo Chenfeng.

“To prevent any targets from escaping, the source has arranged heavy firepower coverage across these final defensive lines,” Aglaea noted. Her voice remained perfectly composed, carrying a faint trace of aristocratic observation. “If Miss Vector were present, she could easily deflect these ballistic strikes.”

Mo Chenfeng nearly burst into tears on the spot.

“But I do not have that kind of power!” he screamed in absolute despair, though his feet did not dare stop moving. He broke into a frantic, zigzagging sprint. “I am just a delivery guy! Running away is literally my only skill!”

“Please rest assured.” The Cloth Artisan raised a single, jointed finger and tapped the empty air. “Although this vessel’s Golden Threads reserves are limited and cannot directly sever their weaponry, it is more than sufficient to assist you in evading.”

“I really hope so…” Mo Chenfeng gritted his teeth and risked a glance over his shoulder.

The heavy soldier did not bother reloading the launcher. It simply dropped the empty tube to the asphalt, drew a massive, large-caliber assault rifle from its back, and charged forward, joining a surging tide of mechanical horrors pouring out from the mist.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Muzzle flashes lit up the fog like strobe lights. Simultaneously, the sickening, high-pitched whistle of incoming rockets echoed from three different directions.

Boom! Boom!

Explosions detonated in a cascading chain right on his heels. Chunks of shattered concrete rained down, slamming into his back and tearing through his jacket.

They always said real men never looked back at explosions. Right now, Mo Chenfeng felt he was the most authentic man on the planet, entirely because he was too terrified to turn his head. A single second of hesitation would reduce him to a smear of red paste on the pavement.

“To the left.” Aglaea’s voice cut through the deafening roar of war.

Mo Chenfeng threw his weight hard to the left without a shred of hesitation.

A rocket screamed past his right shoulder, the sheer radiant heat singeing the ends of his hair.

“Duck.”

He threw his hands over his head and collapsed into a sliding crouch. A concentrated stream of heavy machine-gun fire ripped through the space where his torso had just been, shredding a brick wall ahead into a shower of sparks and dust.

He lost count of how many times the Reaper’s scythe brushed against his neck. His entire reality narrowed down to the shrieking wind, the devastating explosions, and Aglaea’s chillingly calm instructions guiding him through the storm of steel.

He burned through the very last drops of his mental stamina, reading the flow of the wind to adjust his footing.

Suddenly, the chaotic turbulence vanished. The suffocating pressure of incoming fire faded into nothingness.

The distinct, floating silhouette of the Cloth Artisan drifted back into his line of sight, waiting quietly in the center of an empty intersection.

“Well done.” Aglaea’s voice carried a faint, genuine note of approval. “All the heavy ordnance has missed, and the Puppet Soldiers have fully entered their designated coordinates.”

“Is… is it over?”

Mo Chenfeng’s knees buckled. He nearly face-planted into the concrete, barely catching himself by bracing his torn hands against his thighs. He gasped for air, his lungs screaming in protest. Cold sweat had long since drenched his clothes, sticking the fabric to his spine like a layer of freezing ice.

“Then… are we… heading to that trap you set up now?” He forced his head up, his vision swimming as he stared at the Cloth Artisan. His voice was so weak it sounded like a dying confession. “How much further… do I have to run?”

“We are already here.”

Mo Chenfeng froze, his oxygen-starved brain failing to process the statement.

The Cloth Artisan slowly raised its invisible arm and snapped its wooden fingers.

A crisp, resonant hum echoed across the ruined street.

The next second, Mo Chenfeng’s eyes widened to their absolute limits. The scene that unfolded before him burned itself into his retinas, destined to haunt his memories for the rest of his life.

Out of the seemingly empty air, countless streaks of brilliant gold materialized.

They were threads.

Thousands upon thousands of Golden Threads manifested in the blink of an eye, crisscrossing in a dense, inescapable geometric web that filled the entire avenue. They gleamed with a cold, divine luster under the pale sunlight, looking exactly like a colossal net woven by the hands of a god to snare the heavens and the earth.

Instantly, the deafening roar of heavy boots and mechanical engines behind him ceased.

It was as if someone had pressed the mute button on the entire world.

Mo Chenfeng stiffly rotated his neck to look back.

The hundreds of heavily armed Puppet Soldiers that had been hunting him down like a pack of rabid wolves were now completely paralyzed.

Gleaming Golden Threads were coiled tightly around their mechanical wrists, their reinforced ankles, their armored necks, and the very triggers of their weapons. They were frozen mid-stride, weapons raised, optical sensors glowing—yet completely unable to move a single millimeter.

They were nothing more than a collection of broken toys, their autonomy instantly stripped away by an unseen puppeteer.

Clatter.

A heavy rifle slipped from the loosened grip of a frontline soldier, striking the cracked asphalt with a sharp, echoing ring.

It was the only sound left in the entire street.