Han Qingyu did not witness any of what happened next, including the television sets abruptly losing their signal to static or the dark shadow that appeared beneath the moon before vanishing again.
Of course, even if he had seen them, he would hardly have thought there was anything strange or miraculous about it.
At that moment, he was walking along the road.
Because the village was nestled in rugged mountains, the houses of Fenglong'ao were scattered rather than clustered together. His great-uncle's house, where the wedding banquet had been hosted today, sat at the head of the village, while Han Qingyu's home stood at the far end, tucked against the mountainside. The distance between them was actually quite considerable.
He had not cut through the village, choosing instead the mountain trail skirting its edge. It was a shortcut, but more importantly, it meant running into fewer people. As for walking in the dark, the moon was out tonight, and he had long grown accustomed to the path anyway.
The breeze stirring at the edge of the woods carried a chill and a faint whistling sigh.
*So, am I really not going to take the exam again? What do I do with myself from now on? What should I do?*
*Farm the land, take a wife, raise kids, and eventually become the village accountant? Or go out into the world, head into the city to work like the folks at school talked about, earning money to support Mom and Dad? Could I... really pull that off?*
He began to feel lost.
For once, Han Qingyu, who did not smoke, felt the urge to light up. Just by chance, he still had the pair of Double Happiness cigarettes the groom had handed him tucked away in his shirt pocket; he had not yet gotten around to giving them to his father.
He lowered his head, pulled one out, and put it between his lips. Then he patted his pockets... only to realize he had no matches at all.
Perhaps because he was finally away from the crowd and out of everyone's sight, that tiny bit of frustration suddenly triggered all the pent-up emotions inside him. A wave of grievance and misery washed over him all at once, pushing him to the brink of tears.
In a state like this, Han Qingyu did not dare go straight home.
Five minutes, ten minutes, or perhaps even longer passed, and Han Qingyu was still sitting on a large slab of green bluestone beside a logged clearing in the moonlit woods, not far from the mountain trail.
At the very least, the chaotic mess in his head had settled down. He was completely calm now.
Apart from the chirping of insects in the grass, his surroundings were completely quiet as well.
It turned out that even if a person could neither see the shape nor hear the sound, when an object large enough swept over their head, they would always feel something.
Han Qingyu suddenly sensed an odd presence above him and tilted his head back.
A dark, conical object—at once jarring and yet moving with eerie natural grace—gradually grew larger in his vision as it slowly descended, finally coming to rest in the clearing roughly thirty or forty meters in front of him.
There had been no fiery exhaust throughout the entire descent, nor any loud noise, save for the occasional crisp snap of bushes being crushed and broken beneath it.
It was perhaps about the size of a jeep, or slightly larger, though not by much.
It was metal. Although it gave off no reflection, it carried the distinct texture of metal.
*What in the world is this?*
*An alien spacecraft? A UFO? Or some new piece of military technology?* Han Qingyu enjoyed reading sci-fi and military magazines, having browsed quite a few borrowed from classmates during school, so his mind naturally drifted in that direction first.
A second later, an alarm went off in his head: *Could this be dangerous?!*
Snapping wide awake, Han Qingyu lunged forward, throwing himself flat into a dirt hollow concealed beneath the bushes.
The lush summer undergrowth and thick weeds hid him completely. Holding his breath, he peered out with utmost caution.
About a minute went by. The conical craft did not open, nor did it make any mechanical sounds.
Instead, a dense, rushing whistle of wind tore through the mountain woods from both sides.
People.
Uniformed in grey shirt-style attire, each carrying a dull, dark metal box on their back and strapped with strange metal bands in several places, they charged through the dark with blades drawn in hand.
Roughly thirty or forty of them sprinted out from both flanks of the forest like gusts of wind through the night.
Or perhaps they were not human at all.
Though their exposed features were undeniably human, no normal person could possibly move that fast—not even an Olympic champion could run at such a speed.
*What is going on here?!*
In the dozen or so seconds it took for Han Qingyu's eyes and mind to spin into utter bewilderment, those "people" had already converged on the conical craft.
At that exact moment.
A hatch finally seemed to open at the top of the cone, and two "things" were ejected outward.
Han Qingyu instinctively chose to call them "things"—if not that, the only other term he could think of was "Transformers."
Except they weren't. Han Qingyu had seen Transformers at Wen Jifei's house, and the two figures that had just catapulted from the craft and landed on the ground did not transform at all. They looked like people clad in full-body black steel armor.
Perhaps because of the iron plate, their build appeared considerably taller and broader than that of an ordinary person. If they were truly human, they would have had to stand nearly two meters tall and weigh well over two hundred and fifty jin.
*So, robots? Advanced ones, too.*
Their "armor" clung so tightly to the lines of their bodies, skeletons, and muscles, and moved with such fluid agility, that they looked nothing like the robots depicted in magazines and movies—bulky, sluggish, and clumsy to the eye.
It was only because Han Qingyu had never encountered concepts like an "exoskeleton combat suit" that he lumped them under the broad label of robots.
In short, everything unfolding before him had blown past his frame of reference and far exceeded his ability to comprehend.
And the two sides appearing before his eyes were clearly hostile toward one another.
There was no dialogue, no pause. Combat erupted the very instant they made contact. Like a pack of wolves colliding head-on with two ferocious tigers, they clashed in a swift, violent shock of force.
Behind the charging crowd, the dull metal boxes on their backs began to gleam with a faint, crystalline blue light from within, flickering in unison. Accompanied by that glow, the crowd's charging speed surged once more.
Dirt and gravel kicked up beneath the soles of their boots whizzed sharply through the air.
The two black-armored robots stood their ground. Gripping massive, umbrella-like column swords with both hands in perfect unison, they drove them straight down from above, slamming the blades into the earth until nearly half their length was submerged.
An explosive shockwave surged outward like a detonating blast of air. The tremors rippled across the ground, sending plumes of dust rising and gravel flying.
With that single strike, the forward-most vanguard was practically stopped in its tracks, several of them thrown backward through the air to crash against the ground.
Yet the charge behind them did not halt for even a second. Almost immediately, another group seized the opening, braving the blast wave and flying earth to close the distance.
...Close-quarters combat had begun.
The entire battlefield dissolved into a chaotic, blinding blur of speed and ferocity, impossible to follow clearly.
At a certain moment, a bloodcurdling scream cut through the din. A severed limb dropped to the ground, blood gushing like a spring from the stump to seep into the soil and stain the earth beneath the pale moonlight.
Han Qingyu did not run, nor did he dare stand up. He simply lay pressed flat in the hollow, watching it all in dazed, blank horror. It was not that he was particularly brave; he simply... had no room in his head to even consider the question.
*They don't seem to be a match for them,* he even found himself subconsciously judging the balance of power between the two sides after a moment.
The "humans" did not appear capable of beating the "robots."
They had the advantage in numbers, but those two robots were clearly far stronger.
The blades in their hands seemed quite exceptional, sharp and resilient enough to cleave through the iron armor with dull thuds. But the two column swords wielded by the robots—resembling closed, oversized black umbrellas—were far larger, and evidently far more devastating.
What was more, the two robots were not remotely clumsy or sluggish as one might have imagined; they were frighteningly agile and fast.
Dodging, darting, sprinting, screeching to a dead stop, and reversing direction—their speed and transitions were so seamless that... even if twenty cars were driven straight at them in an attempt to run them down, not a single one would stand a chance.
Even a Transformer had to skid and brake with sparks flying to overcome its inertia when making an abrupt stop and turn, but these things acted as though inertia did not exist for them at all.
Of course, they lacked the exaggerated scale of a Transformer. Visually, they resembled humans far more closely.
In short, the disparity between individuals was simply overwhelming.
In just a brief span, five or six on the "human" side had already collapsed. At least two were killed on the spot, while the rest appeared grievously wounded, completely unable to rise for the moment.
Han Qingyu saw one "human" whose chest had been run clean through, briefly hoisted on a robot's massive umbrella sword as it swung through the air, scattering a shower of blood.
Yet through their sacrifice, they had achieved one objective: dividing the battlefield.
The two black-armored robots were now separated into two distinct combat rings, each fending off waves of coordinated attacks and sudden ambushes coming from every direction.
The battle seemed to have transitioned into an encirclement aimed at wearing them down.
Regrettably, the individual power gap remained vast. The encircling fighters could not hold their own in a direct clash, leaving them desperately reliant on flanks and ambushes from behind. The moment their intentions were anticipated and read, they suffered even heavier casualties.
Han Qingyu remained pressed flat, watching...
*Whizz... thud.*
A shard of iron, apparently shattered and deflected from a blade, suddenly sliced through the air at an angle right over his head before embedding itself firmly into the soil.
The fierce whistling of wind bore witness to its sheer velocity and force. Had it flown just a fraction lower, it might have cleaved a piece of him away right then and there.
In an instant, cold sweat drenched his entire body.
Steel and blood wrenched Han Qingyu violently out of his earlier stupor and detached curiosity.
In the face of life and death, failing the gaokao was such a trivial matter after all.
The nineteen-year-old country boy finally began to grasp the terrifying reality of teetering on the edge of mortality—the genuine, bone-chilling dread of realizing what an extraordinary incident and perilous predicament he had stumbled into.
The clash grew increasingly violent, the sounds of impact strangely dull rather than sharp, drumming ceaselessly against the air.
If he tried to run now, the odds of not being spotted were slim to none. Pressed tight against the earth, buried deep in the hollow, Han Qingyu clung to a final shred of hope. Trembling uncontrollably, he prayed the fighting would drift far away or wrap up quickly, without anyone ever noticing him.
Yet luck was not on his side. With a sudden dull *thud* from the battlefield...
A figure was hurled backward through the air over a dozen meters, flailing like a kicked duck before crashing down into a patch of bushes and weeds less than two meters away from Han Qingyu.
*He doesn't seem dead yet,* Han Qingyu thought, hearing the man's labored, agonizing gasps.
*But... he's probably not far from it, either.*
At the same time, Han Qingyu finally confirmed beyond any doubt that the group carrying the metal boxes were indeed human.
He could clearly hear them speaking now. In response to what had just happened, several voices cried out toward his direction all at once, shouting, "Captain Lao!"—their voices laden with panic, dread, and fury.
Amidst the chorus of alarmed shouts, Han Qingyu raised his head.
In the thick of the battle, a robot that showed visible signs of damage turned toward his direction, raising the arm that was not holding its sword.
*Is it... finishing him off? Don't tell me it has a laser cannon? A sleeve dart, a flying dagger? A detachable mechanical arm?*
Han Qingyu glanced over and saw that the fellow lying beneath the bushes... was looking right back at him with open, feeble eyes.
Faced with that, doing nothing felt wrong.
Almost instinctively, the simple country lad reached out and hauled the man into the hollow where he was lying.
Fortunately, thanks to the slight slope of the ground, it took little effort.
Meanwhile, the people carrying the metal boxes threw themselves forward in reckless disregard of danger, swarming the robot to prevent it from delivering any follow-up strike.
Concealed by the undergrowth, no one could see clearly what was happening over here, nor did anyone have the leeway to break away and offer aid. Redoubling their assault, the fierce combat raged on.
*Looks like he passed out... yeah. But he saw me just now! Damn it.*
*So, do I choke him to death? And then push him back out?*
*And after that, keep lying low, or take a gamble and try to crawl away?*
Looking at the fellow beside him, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, paralyzed but clearly still breathing, Han Qingyu silently pondered his options.
Chapter 2