The primary function of the Northland javelin formation was to blast apart—or rather, scatter—the two relatively dense clusters of Great Spikes; its actual lethal effect was minimal.
In an attack method driven by a human source energy surge, source energy relied on dead iron for conduction, and the moment a weapon left the hand, its power plummeted. This was common knowledge.
Even Han Qingyu's Rusty Sister Dimple Slash was no exception. Its strength lay in range and surprise; its actual striking power was weaker than an ordinary blow, deteriorating the farther it traveled.
Moreover, once thrown, the blade followed only a simple, predetermined trajectory. It could not be controlled remotely or steered, let alone return on its own.
In actual combat, as Wen Jifei had once put it: "Throwing the sword looks real slick, but then you gotta go pick it up... If there's a crowd and you can't get it back, you're screwed. What's worse is somebody else might pick it up."
To counter this, Han Qingyu's usual workaround was to follow the blade. The blade flew, and he used his speed to chase after it and catch it.
Yet before him now lay a massive battlefield. The enemies were numerous and individually formidable; such a method hardly seemed practical here.
The blue-light column sword was different—at least it flew back. With his bone source having permeated it, Han Qingyu was also confident that the column sword wouldn't be snatched back by the Red Shoulder.
Much like the Northland javelin formation, the first wave of two hundred suits of heavy full-armor Azure had dropped into the battlefield was not meant primarily to inflict casualties.
Unlike Rusty Sister's case, where she was practically one with her armor, these suits were cumbersome and offered little offensive power.
However, heavy armor possessed excellent defensive attributes. Flinging them onto the battlefield was like driving stakes into the ground, drawing and pinning down the surrounding Great Spikes to prevent them from gathering in massive numbers.
Still, that heavy armor defense could not hold out for long, nor would the two swarms blasted apart by the javelin barrage stand dumbly forever.
Those truly tasked with cutting the lines and dealing the first wave of lethal strikes were the elite squads charging in right behind them.
Command had divided each elite squad into two or three charge formations for this battle... At this moment, over a hundred streaks of light up ahead had already swept into the snow-covered battlefield.
Viewed from the rear, the charge across the field looked like over a hundred super-speedboats simultaneously tearing through waves across the sea.
The clashing of dead iron rang out in dense succession.
Following predetermined routes, banners fluttered as squads cut their way rapidly across the battlefield through the slaughter along the way, fighting deep into the snowy mist.
In this round, the elite squads did not seek massive kills; their objective was effective compartmentalization. Before the mothership could sound an alert, they had to scale the heights to designated positions, establish a circular perimeter, and trap as many Great Spikes as possible down below to be wiped out piecemeal.
Only then would they concentrate their attack on the mothership.
Otherwise, if all twelve hundred Great Spikes fell back to defend to the death, Azure would never breach their lines to reach the craft.
And so, the opening strategy of this battle was set into motion.
Thus far, the Great Spikes cut off in the lower field still seemed oblivious. They cared only about locking onto the nearest targets and hacking away, completely devoid of strategy or coordinated response.
Black-armored Great Spikes were truly stupid. Humanity had proven this time and again over nearly a century of combat experience and experiments.
Azure had tried every conceivable method against them—sonic waves, viruses, corrosives, poison gas, radiation...
Yet the results merely proved once more how dead iron and source energy defied human comprehension. The ironclad rule that human source energy conduction and dead iron were required to pierce their defenses remained unbroken.
...
Over thirty thousand men formed the ordinary battle lines, their hands gripping their straight swords tight.
According to pre-battle orders, an interval of five to fifteen seconds separated their entry from that of the elite squads. Squad 1777 stood relatively toward the rear of the array, waiting.
"Tangtang, look at Qingzi," Liu Shiheng murmured suddenly.
"Huh?" He Tangtang turned his head blankly, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. "What's wrong? Isn't he always like this? Expressionless, just looking like he's thinking about something."
"His eyes are different today... Look at him. He's probably thinking, 'Once I get over there, I'm going to butcher them all,'" Liu Shiheng chuckled under his breath.
In truth, aside from a select few, the vast majority of Squad 1777 had never seen Han Qingyu fight at full power.
Last time? Last time, he had just been running the entire time.
...The collective hum and rumble of source energy apparatuses drew closer from up ahead.
"Three, two, charge!" Lao Jian barked, and Squad 1777's apparatuses roared in unison as they surged toward the battlefield.
With their apparatuses engaged, the soldiers ran at blistering speeds. Wind whipped past their ears, and snowflakes fell like rain, lashing against their faces and bodies.
"This speed is too slow for you, isn't it?!" Lao Jian yelled mid-charge.
They were actually very close, but the wind tore at his voice.
Han Qingyu barely caught it. He glanced at Captain Lao, his gaze puzzled, but offered no answer.
"You should be up there. I know."
The boy was destined for greatness; Lao Jian knew it full well. As a top combat power—someone who had directly parried a Red Shoulder's strike and stolen its weapon just days ago—he was staying in the ordinary squads' combat zone entirely for the sake of Squad 1777.
He should have been up above, doing more, capable of doing more. Perhaps he felt a pang of guilt or regret?
"Go! When the time comes, go up and help... Don't worry about us." Lao Jian laughed heartily against the whipping wind and snow, bellowing, "Rest easy. Our 1777 can hold!"
Han Qingyu looked back at him, hesitated for a moment, and nodded.
He did harbor such thoughts, though not out of a desire to show off or win glory. Merits—short of the Star of Azure—had become rather numb to him by now.
It was simply that, knowing the threat he posed to the mothership, Han Qingyu felt his presence up there might reduce some of the casualties.
In this battle, the elite squads above acted like the death-defying blocking squads and platoons of wartime eras, prepared to fight down to the last man to achieve their strategic goal. It was bound to be horrifyingly bloody.
The battlefield loomed right before them, their pounding footsteps never slowing.
"Have you heard of sealing Mount Langjuxu?!" Lao Jian suddenly asked again.
"...I have," Han Qingyu replied blankly, unsure of his point.
Going by past experience, he and Captain Lao held rather different values. Captain Lao placed Azure's conviction and honor above all else, even life itself.
As a pure Azure soldier, a former university lecturer, and now an eleven-year veteran frontline vanguard, Captain Lao flashed Han Qingyu a brilliant smile. He turned his head forward, his sword pointing straight toward the heights of the snow mountain.
"There's no Langjuxu here. But you can carve your name at the peak of Xilang!"
The words fell.
Squad 1777 plunged into their designated zone.
Several surrounding squads were already engaged in bitter combat. In their field of vision, a heavily wounded Bhutanese soldier clung desperately to the back of a Great Spike, roaring and struggling in a futile attempt to slow the creature down for his teammates...
Every second was drenched in blood. Hold them, destroy them; hold as many as possible, eliminate them as fast as possible... This was the mission and conviction of every soldier in the ordinary battle lines.
Humanity had resorted to the most primitive, chaotic methods of warfare.
"Targets ahead, three—"
Before Lao Jian could finish, beside him—
*Voom!*
A source energy burst—a sound heard everywhere across the battlefield. But this particular burst was far too majestic, rattling the members of Squad 1777 and the neighboring squads alike.
Right then, even Wu Xu and Shen Yixiu froze for an instant. They both knew Han Qingyu possessed an extreme burst state, but neither had expected him to unleash full power right from the start, in an ordinary battle line where it didn't seem necessary yet.
*Since I'm in the ordinary combat zone, killing one more means fewer people die.* That was Han Qingyu's thought. Thus, holding nothing back, he directly engaged four turbines.
Perhaps because he had unleashed a burst just a few days ago and his body had not yet finished digesting it, this time, as three metal blocks melted into his body... life source energy began to overflow, and bone source surged...
Even under these conditions, Han Qingyu gritted his teeth against the agonizing pain and forced down a fourth block. He needed greater intensity.
Eleven metal blocks—it wouldn't matter if he burned through them all today.
Besides, once they won, there would be over three hundred shuttle craft here, not to mention... the mothership at the peak? That one could wait.
In that brief instant under the stunned gazes around him, Han Qingyu's soaring, charging figure swept between two Great Spikes.
Amid collective gasps of astonishment,
one of the Great Spikes turned its head, prompting cries of alarm from the onlookers.
At the same time, Han Qingyu spun in midair, his blade carving a counterclockwise semicircle. *Fff-oom!* A sonic boom detonated in the air, audible for a thousand meters around.
Then—*crack!*
The dead iron didn't even produce the sound of splintering metal; only a crisp, colossal cleaving sound rang out.
Before onlookers could even shift their gaze, half of the Great Spike's neck was severed clean through. Its heavy head tilted sideways... and it collapsed stiffly.
The Great Spike's self-destruction initiated. But on this desperate battlefield where every second mattered, nobody cared about the minor wounds a shower of shrapnel might cause.
Instead:
"Did he... just instakill it?!"
"In an ordinary battle line, someone just instakilled a Great Spike?!"
"Qingzi... can already instakill Great Spikes?!"
"Roar!" The next second, roaring cheers erupted across the entire sector. "Kill!"
Not far off, the heavily wounded Bhutanese soldier who had just been flung off a Great Spike's back twisted his body midair... and saw it.
With the last shred of his fading consciousness, he grinned—a radiant, triumphant, wild grin.
Pure joy, pure exhilaration. How did the Chinese word for 'kill' go again? He desperately wanted to shout it.
At this moment, the Great Spike's thrusting column sword was piercing straight toward him, yet he was smiling.
He was about to be impaled...
Then—*clang!*
A spinning dead iron straight sword slammed violently into the column sword, knocking it off course.
Squad 1777's two formations had already engaged one of the two remaining Great Spikes in the target area, while Wu Xu and Rusty Sister teamed up to hunt down the other. Han Qingyu had no worries on their account; he would begin roaming across the battlefield. He might not be able to save everyone, but he could kill more, do more.
*Clang!* Having collided with the column sword, the straight sword deflected through the air into the distance.
Han Qingyu couldn't catch it and didn't even look. Charging forward, his right hand drew his second dead iron straight sword from behind his back, pouncing on the Great Spike from the flank.
*Whoosh... shing!* The Great Spike spun around, sweeping its column sword horizontally. Han Qingyu raised his blade to block.
Because he was airborne and had dispersed part of the impact force, his body was not sent flying; instead, he drifted midair along the arc of the sweeping column sword... bringing him right up behind the Great Spike's neck.
"What an opening! If only his other sword were still in hand..." onlookers realized, lamenting the lost chance.
*Bang!* A gunshot—an eerie and rare sound in an Azure battle formation—suddenly rang out.
*Clink.* The sword Han Qingyu had just sent flying was struck midair by an 18mm bullet, ricocheting straight back toward him!
Under dumbfounded gazes,
Han Qingyu snatched the sword from midair with his left hand and swept his arm outward—*shing!*
The blade tore open a deep wound along the back side of the Great Spike's neck... carving downward in reverse as he landed.
The moment Han Qingyu hit the ground, his momentum didn't falter in the slightest. Dropping into a slight crouch and springing up, he reverse-gripped both blades, plunged them behind its shoulders... and dragged downward.
This Great Spike was not yet dead, but it was practically there.
The second one!
"..."
This time, no roaring cheers erupted from the surrounding troops. Excitement and shock filled every eye and heart. For the longest time, as individuals, humans had always been the ones slaughtered before the Great Spikes; even when ordinary squads formed battle lines to surround and attack them, casualties were common.
Yet at this moment, a bizarre scene unfolded across this battlefield...
Someone was slaughtering Great Spikes.
Chapter 261