Kiana and the Captain's Bizarre Adventure

Chapter 178 Captain and Kiana

Although she now had a partner to act with, Kiana wasn't foolish enough to blindly trust the captain unconditionally. Therefore, the first thing Kiana wanted to figure out after the captain woke up was his identity.

Why would he risk his life to save her? Why did she instinctively want to get closer to the captain? Why... so many questions swirled in Kiana's mind, and she didn't know where to begin.

"that…"

Kiana hesitated, her open mouth seemingly stuck in the distance as if something was blocking it. But the captain wasn't in a hurry. He first brewed and poured the tea he had found after rummaging through his belongings, and then gently placed it next to Kiana.

As Kiana watched the steam rising from the black tea, she finally calmed down. She slowly let out a sigh of relief and looked calmly at the captain.

"Could you tell me your real identity first?"

"This...it might be complicated to explain to Fu Hua..."

Kiana looked at the captain in shock when she heard him casually mention Fu Hua's name, then stood up and stared at him in a wary posture.

"Hey! I told you, Captain, people would be wary if you were so blunt. Why didn't you believe me?"

A voice rang in Kiana's mind, while the captain opposite her smiled helplessly.

"Xiao Shi, you know I don't like all those roundabout ways. Last time, acting according to your suggestions was troublesome enough."

"Who exactly are you? And who is this Xiao Shi?"

Kiana asked warily, her serious expression making her look like a cat with its fur standing on end to the captain. In fact, Kiana at this stage was quite close to this state—vulnerable and sensitive. Even Fu Hua, hiding deep within Kiana's mind, couldn't help but jump out and look at the captain warily.

However, it was as if the captain could see Fu Hua. The moment Fu Hua appeared, he turned his gaze to her. Then, the person the captain called Xiao Shi appeared in front of the two of them.

"Class monitor?" Kiana, the Herrscher of Knowledge, who looked almost exactly like Fu Hua, blurted out instinctively, "No, you're not the class monitor."

"I didn't expect you to be able to recognize the difference between me and that old relic over there so quickly. Not bad, not bad!"

The Herrscher of Knowledge, in high spirits, stepped forward and patted Kiana on the shoulder: "That's right! I'm definitely not that old fogey. Kiana, remember to call me the great Herrscher of Knowledge!"

"The Herr of Knowledge?"

Before Kiana could react, Fu Hua quickly separated Kiana from the Herrscher of Knowledge, looking at the Herrscher of Knowledge with a wary expression. The Herrscher of Knowledge, who had been in a good mood, immediately put on a praising face.

"Kiana, be careful! In my memory, the Herrscher of Consciousness is the Herrscher who controls consciousness, and its Herrscher Core was also the material used by the previous civilization to create the Divine Key Feather. Once you are affected, I'm afraid I can't help you escape in the present!"

"Hey old fogey, that's really harsh of you! Besides, if I wanted to control Kiana, do you think you could even detect it with that tattered feather and your consciousness that's almost at its limit?"

"..."

Fu Hua remained silent, keeping a watchful eye on the Herrscher of Knowledge and the Captain, in case they made any ill moves.

As a result, the Herrscher of Knowledge got angry; she simply couldn't stand Fu Hua staring at her with such a wary look.

"You old fogey, you're so stubborn! I'm not playing with you guys anymore! If you want the intelligence, go see for yourself!"

After saying that, he used his ability to stuff all the information about himself and the captain into Kiana's mind. Kiana felt as if several people were forcibly prying open her skull with wooden sticks and stirring it wildly inside, which made her feel both headache and nauseous.

After sorting through the information sent to her by the Herrscher of Knowledge, Kiana looked at Fu Hua with a complicated expression, and Fu Hua returned Kiana's gaze with the same complicated expression.

Well, whether it's the Herrscher of Knowledge or the Captain, the identities of these two people and the information they brought were beyond their expectations.

Putting aside the impact their identities would have on their respective people, the fact that the intelligence revealed they had successfully overcome the Honkai was explosive enough.

Kiana never expected that the captain's true identity would be the captain of the Hyperion, and that he had that kind of relationship with her from another world. Moreover, the identity of the Herrscher of Knowledge is quite shocking in a certain sense.

The mere fact that the new Herrscher consciousness, born from Fu Hua's discarded body, was distorted by Fu Hua's thousands or tens of thousands of years of memories, was enough to stir Kiana's dormant heart.

Not to mention that later, in a fit of pique, the Herrscher of Knowledge grabbed herself and Bronya, who happened to be passing by, just to prove that she was the real Fu Hua, and made the two of them decide who the real Fu Hua was.

The result was naturally that the Herrscher of Consciousness broke through her defenses and was ultimately defeated by herself within the space of consciousness. What was unexpected was that Fu Hua's true identity was actually a fusion warrior from a previous civilization, who, for various reasons, became the Crimson Iris Immortal, the guardian of Shenzhou.

Later, due to severe injuries and the shattering of her sword heart, she lost the strength of an immortal. Only then did she turn to cooperating with Destiny. Destiny provided power to protect the Divine Land, and the price was that Fu Hua herself had to work for Otto.

Furthermore, according to the information provided by the Herrscher of Knowledge, he would reconcile with Fu Hua in the future, and with their combined efforts, he would defeat the Herrscher of Knowledge and prepare to seal her away. However, he was interrupted at the last moment. The Herrscher of Knowledge did not provide the reason, but her statement that she was fed up with exchanging sacrifices for so-called life suggests that his future self must have done something he would regret.

Similarly, through the information provided by the Herrscher of Knowledge, Kiana now understands Fu Hua's predicament to some extent. However, understanding is one thing, but to completely forgive her is probably not something that can be easily accomplished.

Kiana was momentarily stunned by this information that was so far removed from reality, and did not doubt its authenticity at all.

On the contrary, after sorting out this intelligence, Fu Hua immediately raised questions, which resulted in her being complained about by the Herrscher of Knowledge for a long time. Only after the captain comforted her did a conflict break out.

However, this also brings a problem: they cannot prove that this intelligence is completely false, and similarly, the captain cannot rely on this intelligence to gain their true trust.

Although Kiana instinctively wanted to trust the captain, reason told her that she shouldn't trust this man so easily since they had only just met, and the information he gave her about their relationship might be false.

Two conflicting thoughts swirled in Kiana's mind, preventing her from fully calming down and thinking. Perhaps sensing Kiana's current predicament, Fu Hua spoke up.

"Although I don't know the specifics of Kiana's current situation, I think you can try following your heart. I believe your intuition will give us the answer we need."

"Follow my heart..."

Kiana clenched her right fist and gently placed it on her heart. After a moment of thought, she looked at the captain and the Herrscher of Knowledge.

"It's decided! Captain, right? I look forward to working with you from now on."

Seeing that Kiana had chosen to trust him, the captain was naturally overjoyed. However, Kiana's next words calmed him down.

"However, if I find out you're up to no good, don't blame me for taking action! Sorry, even if you're my savior, it doesn't matter, my current situation is too sensitive."

"...I understand. So what are you planning to do next?"

"I plan to infiltrate Shencheng Medicine to take a look. If the information you provided is true, as long as we stop the World Serpent's conspiracy, the collapse here will naturally not happen again."

"Do you have any methods to infiltrate Shencheng Medicine?"

When the captain asked, Kiana gave her own answer.

"I don't know. Let's take a step and see."

Hearing this, the captain scratched his head in distress, realizing that the Kiana in front of him was not the Kiana from his own world, and did not have the power to use the Herrscher of the Void's authority at will.

Recalling Kiana's past experiences of dramatic ups and downs, she desperately trained in the Void Sword Qi to fulfill Himeko's last words to her. This resulted in Kiana fully mastering the Herrscher of the Void's abilities when she infiltrated the Divine City Medical Center, and with Fu Hua's help, successfully defeating the Herrscher of the Void's consciousness.

Having accomplished what was only achieved later in the Herrscher of Domination incident in the original work, Kiana, now completely transformed, naturally found herself in a very comfortable position with the security system of Divine City Medicine. She could easily infiltrate the facility silently with just a spatial teleportation.

Even the final bomb was taken directly to the high altitude to detonate and absorb the Honkai energy within. If Kiana hadn't still had a part of her subconscious that rejected her identity as a Herrscher, the Sinner's Lament storyline wouldn't have happened. It just goes to show that sometimes you have to marvel at the existence of so-called plot-correcting power.

Back in the present, Kiana in this world hasn't fully mastered the Herrscher of the Void's abilities, so she can't use the infiltration methods from her own world.

Kiana in front of me isn't exactly good at thinking about how to infiltrate, so if she were to do it herself, she'd probably have to rely on her mediocre infiltration skills and luck.

Thinking about this gave the captain a headache. Although the Herrscher of Knowledge could handle the human part of the infiltration, Divine City Medicine was the World Serpent's headquarters in Sky City, and it had many mechanical guards inside, not to mention the almost blind-spot-free surveillance equipment.

Moreover, the Herrscher of Knowledge is not in a good state right now. She is still suffering from the interference of the Honkai Will. Giving Kiana and the others that information was the limit of what she could do at the moment.

It wasn't that she found it troublesome to use such a crude method to cram all the information in; rather, with the Honkai Will's interference becoming increasingly intense, the Herrscher of Consciousness found it difficult to subtly and quietly transmit information to Kiana and the others. Every time the Herrscher of Consciousness used her powers, the Honkai Will would lock onto her more precisely and come knocking on her door.

In the words of the Law of Knowledge, it feels like you owe a high-interest loan and can't pay it back, and people come to your door every day to collect the debt—it's incredibly annoying.

In this way, the only one they can rely on is Feather Dust, whose abilities are the same as those of the Herrscher of Knowledge. However, as mentioned earlier, there are not only human security guards inside Divine City Medicine, but also a large number of mechanical guards.

These were not things that Yu Duchen could easily handle, let alone having to stay in the blind spots of the surveillance cameras at all times. Although the captain had indeed learned some hacking techniques from Bronya, he unfortunately did not have suitable electronic devices to hack into.

"To be honest, I don't recommend that you go to Shencheng Pharmacy right now."

Ultimately, the captain offered his advice. Although somewhat dissatisfied, Kiana knew she currently lacked the ability to infiltrate the Divine City Medical Center. She was completely unaware of everything, from the patrol routes and shift changes of human security guards to the blind spots of mechanical guards and surveillance equipment.

Infiltrating without any prior knowledge would most likely result in being discovered. If you were lucky, you might escape alive, but if you were unlucky, you would be taken to the experimental table and subjected to those inhumane experiments.

The thought of human experimentation sent a chill down Kiana's spine, followed by boundless disgust and anger.

Undoubtedly, these emotions are remnants of the Herrscher of the Void, Sirin. However, Kiana is not yet aware of this and only believes that they are aftereffects of this incident.

After all, the information that the Herrscher of Knowledge gave them was only relatively complete regarding the Sky City incident and the Taixu Mountain incident. Due to the interference of the Honkai Will, Kiana and the others only knew the general outline of what happened afterward, and had no idea what exactly happened.

Not to mention that of these subsequent events, only Mount Taixu and the final battle can be considered the Herrscher of Knowledge's personal experiences; the rest were information compiled from the captain's memories. The Herrscher of Knowledge only had a superficial understanding of this part of the information and was not interested in it, so she simply dumped it all on Kiana.

However, since there was no way to directly infiltrate Shencheng Medical Center, Kiana decided to confront the captain, as she had incurred a significant debt to pay for his treatment and was currently working various jobs to repay it.

Now that the captain has awakened, it's a good time to divide the work. Kiana knows she's not cut out for intelligence work. So, the scouting work naturally falls to the captain, while Kiana goes out to work and earn money as before.

However, now that there's an extra pair of chopsticks for meals, Kiana has to take on an extra job. Mainly, for some reason, Kiana subconsciously doesn't want the captain to eat instant noodles every day like she does, and besides, she's really tired of eating instant noodles for the past few months. She needs to treat herself to a proper meal.

Therefore, Kiana quietly upgraded her meal plan from instant noodles to bento boxes, at the cost of having to take on an additional job.

"Sigh! I should have taken the risk of being discovered and gone to a proper hospital to treat the captain! At least I could have used medical insurance and saved some money. The treatment fees from those underground doctors are really expensive!"

Kiana thought to herself as she carried bricks at the construction site. She simply forgot that the captain, being from a parallel world, wouldn't possibly have any identity information from this world, let alone medical insurance.

Even if you go to a regular hospital and pay for treatment, you'll still have to pay the full medical fees. This also increases the risk of exposing yourself, making it a truly disastrous deal.