That night, snow on Xilang Peak drifted all the way from the summit to the foot of the mountain. Anyone who stayed up late and stood outside could clearly watch the curtain of snow sweep downward, blanketing everything in its path.
Exhausted in body, Han Qingyu had gone to sleep early. When he woke, it was around five in the morning.
Dawn had barely broken. Lifting the tent flap to look outside once more, he saw that the blue light radiating from the dreadnought atop the mountain had converged and vanished. The snow and ice that he and the swarm of Great Spikes had repeatedly plowed through the day before had returned to their original state—in fact, the snowpack appeared even thicker now.
That was yesterday's battlefield. Yesterday had truly been difficult to describe in a few words; he seemed indeed to have averted a defeat almost by accident.
Yet that had merely prevented a catastrophic rout. The overall state of the war remained grim—if anything, even grimmer.
Right before his eyes stood the highest peak in the Azure world. "I hope it doesn't become the start of this world being overturned... Oh well, best to leave such things to the smart people making decisions. I'll just be a good private."
A light dusting of snow lay outside the tent as well, frost clinging to withered yellow blades of grass. Night-patrol squad members crunched past, their footsteps creaking softly against the cold.
A chill seeped through the crack of the opened flap. Although his current constitution made him largely impervious to the cold, he still disliked it. Han Qingyu pulled the flap shut and nestled back into his quilt for a bit longer.
However, sleepiness had left him, and the exhaustion was gone as well.
His body recovered remarkably fast now. Gauging himself, the most noticeable improvements were probably in his speed and endurance. Moreover, he was extremely tough and could take a severe beating—the exact specifics were hard to articulate, but this point had been personally tested by the Red Shoulder.
By comparison, the increase in his offensive power was the slowest and least pronounced, almost as if it were holding back politely, waiting for all other aspects to undergo a qualitative leap first.
"So right now, weapons are crucial to me."
Han Qingyu's twin blades were custom-made, forged by Jiang Chou, the Sub-Sequence blacksmith. Their craftsmanship was superb; in terms of toughness alone, they could withstand direct slashes from the Red Shoulder. Ultimately, however, they were constrained by their material, offering no outstanding advantage when it came to slicing power.
Due to the shortage of dead iron, Azure's sole pursuit for standard-issue weapons over the years had been toughness. As long as soldiers had something to swing and could breach the enemy's defenses, that was more than enough.
As for sharpness or anything beyond that, people had never dared to harbor extravagant hopes.
Thinking of this, Han Qingyu put on his clothes and gear, got up, and brought out the blue-light column sword he had kept tucked under his quilt.
His four-turbine state had long since subsided, but a portion of the bone source energy seemed to have fused into his body, allowing him to still sense the column sword's presence.
In other words, it was virtually impossible for anyone to steal the column sword without Han Qingyu noticing.
"Then... can I move it remotely?! Like the Red Shoulder did."
A jolt ran through his mind. Han Qingyu quickly set the column sword near the entrance of the tent, then retreated to the camp cot on the far side.
Device source energy and liquid source energy surged in unison.
It didn't budge. Nothing... After repeated attempts yielded no response, a fair amount of time slipped by unnoticed. Han Qingyu slotted in a fully charged source energy block without feeling the slightest regret, treating this as practice for externalizing source energy. He could easily execute the Rusty Sister Vortex Slash now, and his degree of control was far greater than before, but ever since witnessing Legion Commander Chen's sweeping, area-wide source energy pressure, he had envied it deeply.
Suddenly, *skrrr.*
The column sword seemed to stir, scraping against the ground in a minuscule shift.
Inspecting it, he found a faint scratch mark left on the ground where the sword had shifted. So it really had moved... Returning to his position, he tried again. *Thump.* It hopped. Confirmed: the column sword could indeed be moved.
For now, this was the limit, but it was enough. In a full four-turbine state, Han Qingyu was confident he could make it fly.
The result of this test bolstered Han Qingyu's resolve not to hand over the column sword for research in the short term. He did not believe anyone else was more entitled to bond with this blue-light column sword right now... At the very least, he would keep it until this battle was over.
"Qingzi, Qingzi, are you up? I heard noises," Shen Yixiu's voice called from outside the tent.
"I'm up," Han Qingyu answered hastily.
The tent flap was pushed aside, and Shen Yixiu ducked inside carrying a basin of hot water. "How are your injur—aah!"
*Clang... splash!*
She had stepped right onto the column sword. The sword rolled underfoot, sending Rusty Sister sprawling onto her back. The entire basin of hot water splashed over her, drenching her armor and spilling across the floor.
Han Qingyu: "..."
"Han Qingyu!" Rusty Sister shot to her feet, her iron armor clattering loudly.
"...Uh, I'm sor—"
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?! Why are you so childish?!" Before Han Qingyu could finish saying he was sorry, Rusty Sister blew up. Only because Qingzi was injured had she kindly boiled hot water for him today and carried it over with her own hands... only to be pranked like this.
"No, no, that's not it!" Han Qingyu rushed over, intending to pick up the column sword and explain. Stepping into the puddle of water, he reached out his hand—
*Swish!*
The blue-light column sword flew straight from the floor into his hand.
Looking down at the column sword in his grip, Han Qingyu froze for a second... He understood: water! He whipped his head around to look toward the distant snow mountain—snow, ice... What could he do with this?! Think, think carefully!
Shen Yixiu had seen it too, and was struck dumb. "You..."
Han Qingyu snapped out of it, turned back, and swept the column sword with a grin of self-satisfaction. "Well? Pretty impressive, huh?"
"Impressive. So you *were* doing it on purpose." Rusty Sister was even more convinced now, assuming he had mastered the trick long ago and deliberately cast the sword at her feet.
Source energy surged through her iron armor. Han Qingyu scrambled out of the tent at once, diving into a snowdrift to hide.
...
"Qingzi?" A teammate on night patrol squatted by the edge of the pit, staring at him in bewilderment.
"Hey," Han Qingyu looked up with a sheepish smile. "Brother Fatty."
Brother Fatty was a five-year veteran whose real name was Tian Jiao. Because of his build, his superiors and veteran peers had always called him Big Fatty Tian, while the recruits called him Brother Fatty.
"Why are you up so early? Are your wounds alright?"
"I'm fine." Han Qingyu glanced in all directions and, seeing that Rusty Sister hadn't chased after him, climbed out of the snow pit. He hesitated before asking, "What's wrong, Brother Fatty? You seem down."
Big Fatty Tian turned his head to look toward the distant airfield.
"Around three in the morning, several of those heavy transport planes touched down. At least two hundred suits of heavy full-body armor were delivered overnight, and reinforcements keep arriving." He paused, then said, "My guess is we're going to storm the mountain."
With that, he dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it out in the snow.
Storm the mountain—fight straight up! Han Qingyu cast a glance back at the snow-covered mountain. The casualties of a direct assault up those slopes would be unimaginable.
After breakfast, the news essentially spread through the entire military encampment.
In the frontline command center, the war-readiness meeting had lasted through the night.
Storming the mountain had become an inevitable decision. The coalition now faced three primary challenges:
First, how to prevent wounded Great Spikes from returning to the dreadnought to recuperate;
Second, with communications jammed on the mountain, how to keep track of the battle across different sectors;
Third, how to stop all the Great Spikes from retreating to the summit and fortifying the dreadnought.
The discussions concluded around nine in the morning. As the supreme commander on the front, Legion Commander Nitesh of the Indedu Front delivered the final operational address:
"Around the mountain, approximately one-third of the way down from the peak, elite squads will establish a circular interception belt and hold it to the death.
"According to intelligence from White Eraser and Mérida, communications work within two hundred meters, so transceivers must still be carried... In addition, bring flags. Beyond two hundred meters, all signals will be given by flag. As long as the flag stands, the soldiers stand, and the position stands.
"Over the next three days, we will deploy small detachments of elite forces to carry out continuous harassment and baiting, drawing the Great Spikes back into a broadly dispersed state, as they were prior to Operation Voice. In three days, we storm the mountain.
"Combat Codename: Flag War."
Chapter 258