Up the sloped snowfield, sporadic sounds of battle still echoed down. That meant some Azure elite squads hadn't been able to evacuate in time. They were trapped.
Worried, Han Qingyu lay beneath the snow, crawling forward to poke his head out and take a look.
He was stunned. Hundreds of Great Spikes suddenly filled his vision, packed shoulder to shoulder in dense clusters.
There were so many he couldn't even take them all in. Just looking at them gave him a brush-with-death sensation, let alone charging in to help.
Han Qingyu didn't have that kind of strength. Going over would only turn him into a puddle of minced meat beneath their feet. Besides, Azure's battle plan had accounted for all sorts of contingencies with detailed withdrawal arrangements, and before the fight they had already designated defensive holdout positions for trapped elite squads to dig in and wait for relief.
Turning his head, Han Qingyu burrowed back into the snow, continuing to crawl toward the flank and rear of the Great Spikes.
*Thud.* The soft snow only covered a small area and soon gave out. Bumping his head against a layer of hard ice, Han Qingyu looked up.
By now dusk had fallen, but with moonlight reflecting off the ice and snow, it remained fairly bright.
There was also the dazzling blue light radiating from the Great Spike dreadnought.
Not far off sat a solitary shuttle craft resting on the snow. Snow didn't seem to accumulate on the thing. After scanning his surroundings and judging it safe enough, banking on his speed to escape if needed, he decisively rose and scurried over in a low crouch.
Reaching it, he laid his hands on it.
The situation was identical to what he had encountered at the Nepal trial ground. The undestroyed shuttle craft was completely intact and hermetically sealed without a single crack. Even if Han Qingyu wanted to pee on it to siphon out source energy, not a drop could seep through.
"Guess there's only one way."
Drawing his blade—
*Clang!*
"Holy crap." That single strike startled even Han Qingyu himself.
*Damn it, that's loud.*
In the open expanse of this moonlit, snow-covered mountain, it even kicked up an echo.
*Don't go drawing a couple of blue-glows over here.* Han Qingyu dropped down and scanned his surroundings for a moment, checking the surface of the shuttle craft while he was at it. A dent—much deeper than the one back in Nepal.
Since stabbing wouldn't work, Han Qingyu pondered for a moment. *Drilling it is, then.*
After waiting a bit and seeing no movement, he sat on the snow with his legs spread, set the tip of his combat blade into the dent, and pressed his palms together around the hilt. Shifting his right hand forward and left hand back, he gave it a fierce, rolling rub.
*Zzzzt!* The blade spun at high speed, its tip acting like a drill bit.
It really worked; the hole had deepened slightly.
He kept rubbing his palms back and forth.
*Skrrr, skrrr, skrrr...*
"Aaaagh—splat!" Liu Shiheng slid the entire way down, finally flying off a relatively low cliff face and plunging headfirst into a snowdrift. He struggled back to his feet, bruised, battered, and clutching his rear.
Not far away, a group of foreign soldiers rushed over. After staring at him for a moment, they suddenly started applauding him.
Chattering away in all kinds of languages, they seemed to be praising him for coming up with such a clever way to escape that hopeless situation.
"..." Liu Shiheng waved a hand in greeting, then lowered his head. *Pffft.* A mouthful of blood splattered across the snow.
Before long, members of Squad 1777 arrived.
Seeing he was fine, they let out a breath of relief, but then immediately remembered that Han Qingyu hadn't returned yet.
"Did you see Qingzi? He went back for you, you bastard!" Wen Jifei barked, anxious and visibly irritated.
Feeling guilty and deeply touched, Liu Shiheng naturally didn't take offense. He gave a meek nod and said, "I saw him. He was the one who pushed me—I mean, Qingzi got me out."
"Then where is he?"
"He..." Liu Shiheng turned to look back, thinking, *Right, where is Qingzi? Isn't he going to slide down like that too?*
They waited a while, but nobody came down.
The entirety of Squad 1777 instantly grew tense. Lao Jian's expression darkened. In circumstances like this, Azure would never deploy troops to rescue a single squad member; even now, several elite squads remained trapped on the mountain.
"I'll go check," Wu Xu said, stepping forward.
"I'm going with Wu Xu," Shen Yixiu said, moving to join him.
Lao Jian was about to grant permission.
Wearing a thoughtful look, Wen Jifei raised his hands to block the two of them. Turning around, he said, "It's fine. Let's wait a bit longer. If you two go up, you might just get in his way."
Their gazes met. Everyone in the squad looked anxious and bewildered.
As the person who understood Han Qingyu best in the whole squad, Wen Jifei had no choice but to explain in an exasperated whisper, "He probably went to steal metal blocks."
"..."
Everyone looked up toward the moonlit snow mountain.
"It's out, it's out, haha!"
After boring a hole into the shuttle craft's hull, it still hadn't self-destructed. Han Qingyu had no choice but to shove some snow inside. Soon enough, he felt the position of the metal block and the surge of source energy.
However, this time Han Qingyu didn't absorb it directly. "There are dozens of these things here. If I absorb them all, won't I explode? Besides, that'd be a terrible waste."
He wedged the tip of his combat blade in, pried the crack open wider with forceful leverage, and reached his hand inside.
Inside the craft, the pyramid-shaped object shattered, and a metal block fell into his hand.
"Huge!"
It was even bigger than the one in Nepal, easily equivalent to sixty or seventy blue crystal blocks. Han Qingyu felt a rush of excitement. Giving it a tight squeeze in his palm, he shoved the metal block into the inner pocket of his winter combat uniform.
Then he quickly crawled toward a second shuttle craft a short distance away.
*Clang!*
*Skrrr, skrrr.*
The second block.
The third block.
His arms grew a bit sore, and blisters seemed to be forming on his palms. None of that mattered, but Han Qingyu discovered another genuinely serious problem: time.
This was too slow and inefficient. At this rate, he'd probably only manage a dozen or so over the entire night. A dozen was a lot, but scattered across this mountain were dozens, even hundreds of shuttle-shaped craft!
Any he didn't pick up felt like a loss!
The very thought made his heart ache.
What was worse, there was no telling when the Great Spikes might return...
With the fourth and fifth blocks secured, added to the five he originally had, Han Qingyu now possessed ten metal blocks. Considering how hefty these five new ones were, they were actually worth far more than ten standard Azure units.
Han Qingyu decided to change tactics right then and there: push the shuttle craft down the mountain first, then harvest them at his leisure.
Carrying them was out of the question—there were far too many. But he could push them, just like he had pushed Liu Shiheng.
Feeling a bit tense, he braced himself to bolt at a moment's notice. Han Qingyu took a deep breath, shoved hard with both hands—and off it went! A shuttle craft glided smoothly down the slope.
*Thump.*
It plunged into the snow.
The muffled sound wasn't particularly loud.
Han Qingyu breathed a sigh of relief. Bracing himself against the snow, he leaned over to look down. The shuttle craft hadn't made it all the way to the foot of the mountain; instead, it was lodged on a flat expanse beneath a cliff face midway down.
*That works too. It's not far from the base anyway—I can just push it again when I head down.*
Thinking this, Han Qingyu walked up a bit, found another shuttle craft, adjusted its trajectory to avoid colliding with the first one—and off it went!
Three, four... higher up, higher still... twenty-four... thirty-one... and further up... thirty-seven, forty-one. Han Qingyu glanced in all four directions. "Maybe that's enough for now?"
By this point, he had unwittingly drawn closer and closer to the summit.
"There's one more over there. Huh, looks a bit blue..."
Stay calm. First replacing the source energy blocks in his device to tune his body to peak condition, Han Qingyu prepared to finish off this last visible shuttle craft and leave.
He climbed higher, and higher, and higher...
*Boom!* The sound echoed only in his mind—a silent, colossal impact struck without warning.
An invisible concussive shock flipped him onto the snow. *Pffft.* He spewed a mouthful of blood, his internal organs feeling as though they were tearing apart.
Han Qingyu was all too familiar with this sensation—a source energy field. He had clashed with Azure's source energy field before.
*So the Great Spike dreadnought, glowing with that dazzling blue light, is actually a gargantuan source energy field.* It was vastly larger than the one used at Huaxia Scientific Research Institute 1 to test degrees of fusion.
With just that brief contact, Han Qingyu was already injured.
At the same time, the liquid source energy inside his body was completely full—so brimming it couldn't hold another drop.
Just as he was about to scramble up, a sudden rumble thundered in the distance. *Rumble!*
What was going on?
The sound came from far away.
Han Qingyu froze for a second. It took him a few moments to realize that this noise seemingly had nothing to do with him.
To the side, along a massive cliff face, the last two trapped elite squads were digging in to hold their ground.
A rescue plane had just approached, only to slam headlong into the snow mountain and crash.
The pilot parachuted out, doing his best to drift into the distance. As he looked back toward the snowy cliff, the members of the final two elite squads holding out for rescue stared at him in utter despair.
Chapter 250