A Lone Hero

Against the colossal cliff wall, the Great Spikes were too heavy to scale it in large numbers, and leaping up fell short of the mark. The occasional one or two that managed to scramble up were slashed back down. Once in a while, one would leap down from above, only to crash hard and batter itself senseless... The black-armored ones really were rather dim-witted. Below, however, they relentlessly slammed into the mountain itself, and the cliff face was now teetering on the verge of collapse. "What the hell is going on?!" "Couldn't we still use aircraft for reconnaissance yesterday?!" "..." With the crash of the rescue aircraft, the Azure battlefield command headquarters dissolved into chaos. Just moments earlier, the aircraft sent to rescue the final two trapped elite squads had smoothly approached the rescue coordinates, only to abruptly lose all communications. The pilot's rushed final words had been: "All instruments failing..." "Report... The plane has crashed. On the mountain—" A female staff member turned around, her lips trembling. "All communication with Mérida and White Eraser on the mountain has been cut off as well." "It's unlikely they can hold out long enough for us to organize a rescue by other means..." Her voice trailed off, her eyes welling with tears. Over the loudspeakers, nothing came through except a loud, grating hiss of static, continuously grating against everyone's nerves in the command post. Yet tests showed communications at the foot of the snow mountain remained unaffected. Evidently, the Great Spikes possessed a jamming system with a localized area of effect. And now, it had been activated. It seemed they, too, were constantly probing and adapting their methods for fighting humanity. *Boom!* Within their sight, a second rescue plane—which had already received headquarters' warning but refused to give up—slammed into the mountainside. *It's over!* No one spoke the words aloud, but the same conclusion weighed heavily on every heart. Aircraft couldn't close in to drop rope ladders, communications on the mountain were dead, and nearly a thousand Great Spikes swarmed up there—over nine hundred of them. Even if Azure deployed all four of its existing super combat powers, they couldn't cut a path through... they couldn't rescue the members of Mérida and White Eraser. What was more, some of those super combat powers would likely be sacrificed there in vain. Through binoculars, that cliff face looked as though it could barely hold up any longer. They were generals. They had to weigh trade-offs; they could not simply throw tens of thousands of troops up the slope to their deaths. No one gave a command, yet the generals filed out of headquarters one by one onto a raised platform to the side. With naked eyes or binoculars, they gazed toward the midpoint of the snowy peak... hoping that those on the mountain might see them, too. Countless Azure soldiers who had not deployed today or had just withdrawn had never returned to their barracks. Noting the scene, they asked among themselves... gathered together, formed ragged ranks, and stood facing the mountain. Operation Voice had, from this moment, ended in utter failure. The outcome of Azure's very first offensive had already claimed lives. Now, they were forced to watch helplessly as two trapped rear-guard elite squads died in battle amidst the swarm of Great Spikes. ... "Hello, hello... White Eraser calling, White Eraser calling..." Listening to the static in his communicator, Wei Jiang switched frequencies again and again, but the result was always the same. Suddenly, he fell silent. His arm holding the communicator dropped limp, and for a fleeting moment, Wei Jiang closed his eyes. A man of command caliber, how could Wei Jiang fail to recognize the reality of their situation? Just a moment later, he opened his eyes. Captain Wei's gaze was calm as he looked upon his brothers. Every member of White Eraser was looking back at him. The cliff face shook... "If—and I say if—White Eraser's honor and mission must end here today, in a moment..." Wei Jiang glanced down at the dense swarm of Great Spikes below. "I will jump down and fight." "To the death, Captain." "Count me in." "The Whites can't go out crushed under falling rocks." Each man felt the same. As the super elites of the Azure Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion, Ninth Army, White Eraser's glory and pride, even if brought to an end, would end in an indomitable charge... adding a few more bloodstained tallies to a kill record soon to be consigned to history. "Then get ready, everyone. Swap your source energy blocks." With that, Wei Jiang glanced over. On the other side of the cliff, the members of Venezuela's Mérida Squad were also clinging to the rock face, swapping out their source energy blocks. Their gazes met. The distance was a bit far. His mind reeling, Wei Jiang didn't shout; instead, he tuned to the other squad's frequency. *Beep, beep, beep... clack.* Surprisingly, the channel seemed to connect. Had communication returned?! Tense and hesitant, Wei Jiang spoke: "Ni hao." From the other side came an awkwardly accented reply: "Ni hao." At those two greetings, both sides felt a brief jolt of excitement. But further tests showed that only short-range communication functioned. They still had no way to reach headquarters... though even if they had gotten through, headquarters likely had no time left to devise a solution anyway. The nearby channel reconnected. "Ni hao." "Ni hao." Unfortunately, neither spoke the other's language. Feeling the cliff face shudder with increasing violence, Wei Jiang thought about it and decided there was no point in passing the communicator to a squad member who knew English. So in the end, most of the members of the two squads could only exchange distant smiles and wave to one another. Then—*clang!* Wei Jiang drew his blade. *Clang...* Across both sides of the cliff, every soldier in both squads unsheathed their weapons. Below, the generals who witnessed this through their binoculars... raised their hands in salute. Nearly forty thousand Azure soldiers—whether they could see it or not, whether at the front line by the foot of the mountain or atop the surrounding hills—raised their hands in salute as one. ... Upon the cliff. Wei Jiang braced himself to leap, raising his blade as he cried: "Azure above all!" "Azure above all!" "For the glory of White!" "For the glory of White!" "For everything—" "For—Captain!" Bai Ji interrupted Wei Jiang with a gasp. Hesitating in tense disbelief, he cried, "Captain, look below?!" At the exact same time, at the foot of the mountain, someone peered through binoculars and shouted frantically, "Generals, Generals, look...!" Halfway up the snow mountain, beneath the cliff, nearly a thousand Great Spikes abruptly began a mass withdrawal. The humans could make no sense of it. Then a strange, drawn-out *di-woo...* emanated from the Great Spike dreadnought, followed by a sequence of bizarre syllables. If Xin Yaoqiao had been present, she would likely have deduced on the spot: the Great Spike dreadnought was sounding an alarm, announcing it was under direct attack. Of course, she might not have had any mind for deductions at all. Because right now, a man named Han Qingyu was still up on that mountain. "Qingzi, he..." As the Great Spikes swept across the mountainside like a deluge, the forty members of Squad 1777 stood at the foot of the mountain, their hearts clutched in anxious bewilderment. Chaos! Nearly a thousand Great Spikes suddenly abandoned the base of the cliff. Half rushed back to guard the dreadnought, while the other half sprinted wildly toward the far side of the mountain. "What's going on?!" "Why is this happening?!" "I don't know, but it's a good thing... isn't it?!" The confusion at the foot of the mountain turned into pleasant surprise—an overwhelming joy mingled with bewilderment. Meanwhile, up on the mountain: "Captain, what about us..." Wei Jiang considered it for a fraction of a second. "Withdraw!" Even if it was a trap, they would leap right into it; the outcome wouldn't be any worse either way. Wei Jiang gave the decisive order. Every squad member rapidly scrambled down the cliff and broke into a mad dash in the opposite direction. Mérida Squad did the exact same thing. Cheers rose up, only to be stifled immediately for fear of alerting the Great Spikes and drawing them back. No one could understand why the Great Spikes had suddenly done this. Until... "Is there someone over there? That black dot, is that a person?! Look..." A foreign officer holding binoculars pointed to another part of the mountainside, speaking in bewilderment. "Yes, yes... there is someone there!" The word spread like wildfire. Now directed, people quickly spotted him through their binoculars. Including the commanders on the high platform, who adjusted their binoculars to track the figure. "If I'm not mistaken, he's wearing Huaxia Front winter fatigues—blackish-brown. And on his shoulder, is he carrying a shuttle craft?!" "So he drew the Great Spikes away?!" "What on earth did he do?! Is it because of the craft on his shoulder?! Is it something special?!" "He... he saved both squads... all on his own!!!" The joy that had just surfaced was instantly choked out by heart-wrenching dread, because right then, behind that lone hero, hundreds of Great Spikes were hurtling toward him. And to draw them off, he hadn't even dropped that potentially vital craft from his shoulder. *You can put it down now!!!* *Drop it and run! Run!* People wished desperately they could shout to him that his comrades had already escaped, that he didn't need to keep drawing the Great Spikes' attention. Yet they could only watch—watching with tear-filled eyes, saluting in fearful admiration... Watching that figure tenaciously hauling the craft as he ran, drawing hundreds of Great Spikes away for his comrades. "Deploy our super combat powers to rendezvous with him!" "Lieutenant General Lü of the Huaxia Front has already headed up the mountain." At almost the exact same time, the members of White Eraser and Mérida, about to reach the mountain flank to make their descent, instinctively looked back through binoculars... and saw a figure leaping and fleeing across the snowy slopes. At least five hundred Great Spikes pursued him across the mountainside! The people at the base were too far to tell who he was, but those on the mountain were closer and could vaguely make him out. "He's from the Huaxia Front," the members of Mérida Squad said. "It's Han Qingyu," White Eraser's members said, exchanging stunned glances. Han Qingyu couldn't help throwing a glance over his shoulder. *The hell is going on?!* *Fuck me!* *Is this really necessary?!* A moment ago, he had only collided with the dreadnought's source energy field. Then, feeling reluctant to part with that shuttle craft with a faint blue sheen, he had carefully cut off his source energy, stepped back inside, and lifted it. And then, the dreadnought had shrieked. Some Great Spike had seemed to say something, too. Next came intense rumblings through the mountain, and hundreds of Great Spikes charged straight at him... So Han Qingyu hoisted the blue-sheened craft and ran for his life. "That's Qingzi, isn't it?" Qi Rourou asked blankly. "Yeah. Who else could it be besides him..." Wen Jifei replied helplessly. What he really wanted to say was: in a situation like this, who else would refuse to drop the craft and still manage to run so damn fast?! Under the moonlight over the snowy mountain, a single figure carried a shuttle craft on his shoulder... dragging a tail of at least five hundred Great Spikes behind him.