Yin Caixin had started calling Han Qingyu "Mister" back at the Nepal trial grounds.
It was also there that this mixed-race girl of Huaxia descent made a circle of friends from the Huaxia Front, acquired her new Chinese name—Yin Caixin—and began learning idioms from Wen Jifei.
In her memory, the very first idiom she learned was "improper desires." As soon as she learned it, she had said it to Han Qingyu, almost making him think he was really that charismatic.
Afterward, the two sides kept in touch through letters. On Han Qingyu's side, Wen Jifei handled most of the replies; even if the others wanted to say something to Caixin, he wrote on their behalf.
The correspondence was entirely in Chinese. Caixin would consult a translation dictionary to puzzle out incoming letters, then painstakingly trace out characters for her replies as a form of study. Each time, she earnestly accepted Teacher Wen's critiques and guidance.
Under those circumstances, it was virtually impossible for her Chinese to improve properly.
For example, she later learned that "you can't judge a book by its cover" was supposedly an insult, while praising someone meant saying "you're nothing more than an empty facade."
So when she recently said she was "at her wit's end," she might have meant she was out of options, or she might have meant she was about to die.
With a Grade B+ source energy degree of fusion and years of armor experience, Yin Caixin was currently quite a bit stronger than He Tangtang. Still, her selection for the joint elite squad did not mean she was a core fighter, nor was she indispensable.
Perhaps her victory at the Nepal trial grounds had elevated the Swiss Front's estimation of her strength, and she had certainly made personal gains and progress... Or perhaps she simply wanted to come and had volunteered to join.
Frontline command had assigned this joint elite squad, which had nearly arrived late, to one of the safest positions along the perimeter: this sheer cliff.
By all logic, the probability of the retreating Great Spike swarm passing through here was the lowest. Yet the unexpected happened after all. Just when the joint squad thought they were safe and had even detached fighters to reinforce neighboring positions, Red Shoulder appeared.
How had it slipped past the super combat powers' vigilance to appear here out of nowhere? Was it an oversight by the super combat powers, or had it teleported? Or was there a passage beneath the cliff? There was no way to know for now.
In any case, Red Shoulder's intelligence was certainly no lower than an ordinary person's. This move was very likely intended to probe for weaknesses, tear open a breach, and guide the Great Spike swarm back to defend the mothership.
As the battle lines shifted upward, the thousand-meter zone surrounding the perimeter positions had turned into the densest, most ferocious battleground. One combat pocket after another fought down to the bloodiest, most desperate state beneath the night sky and the blue light.
The cliff area had originally been the calmest, which was why it had chosen this spot—perhaps intending to hack away the cliff and pave a path once it finished clearing the top.
And just like that, the flag of the joint squad guarding the cliff suddenly fell.
Han Qingyu did not know whether flags had fallen in other sectors—the perimeter was too vast, and the defensive sectors were not tightly linked—but at least in this immediate vicinity, this was the first flag to go down.
The breach had finally appeared in the wall of flesh and blood Azure had erected for this battle.
In this battle, there was no effective communication across the field, so it had long been agreed that the flags were the signals.
At this moment, the brutal slaughter raged on, yet nearly every combat pocket far and near that could see the fallen flag strained during their bitter fighting to peel off soldiers and send reinforcements.
At the same time, vague, indistinct directives echoed from the Great Spike commander inside the mothership.
Azure command discovered that large numbers of Great Spikes were converging toward this area.
Without question, their goal was to widen the breach.
Within seconds, hundreds of Azure personnel charged toward the cliff, and nearly ten thousand people turned their eyes toward the cliff.
Then a figure abruptly surged into their sight.
From the cliff's suspended edge, he vaulted straight into the empty air, his body rising dozens of feet above the plateau.
The first person to arrive had appeared.
"A super combat power?!"
"...No."
"It's That Man." On the current Xilang Peak front, "That Man" was a specific reference—specifically designating a certain Huaxia Front soldier who had drawn off a Great Spike swarm and snatched Red Shoulder's column sword days ago.
"It's Qing!"
"It's King!"
A chorus of garbled pronunciations.
"He's back again."
"But he isn't a super." No matter how formidable Han Qingyu's past performance had been, people clearly remembered that he had been blasted flying by a single strike from Red Shoulder, spitting blood as he plummeted off the cliff.
Even though he had later reappeared cradling Red Shoulder's blue-light column sword.
"If he's just stalling for time... even if he isn't a super, it should be fine, right?"
At this moment, the vast majority of people still did not know that the entity atop the cliff was Red Shoulder.
All around, chaos reigned in every direction.
Yet Han Qingyu could neither see nor clearly hear any of these conditions across the battlefield. He was not even thinking. Soaked in blood, his consciousness was a total haze, and he was moving almost purely on instinct.
Exerting strength for one final upward surge, his body hung in midair. Looking down, the scene atop the cliff unfolded before him.
Red Shoulder! Even with its back turned, it was recognizable at a single glance: that was Red Shoulder.
So it was Red Shoulder!
No wonder there had been no fierce struggle at all.
By now, the flag lay prone across the ice, most likely knocked down deliberately by the joint squad once they realized resistance was futile. Corpses littered the ground, their hot blood melting the snow and ice.
At the far end of the cliff, the few remaining wounded soldiers were making a final stand, Yin Caixin among them.
Carrying an ordinary black column sword, Red Shoulder was walking toward them.
Amid the raging din across the mountain, Yin Caixin held her dead communicator and looked up. Suddenly, she saw that figure appearing at the opposite edge of the cliff—Han Qingyu. Light flared in her blue eyes for an instant, only to be immediately replaced by immense bewilderment and terror. "Mister..."
Given the distance, it was already impossible for Han Qingyu to reach them in time.
However...
Red Shoulder turned its head.
With just a single glance back, it wheeled to the right and violently charged toward Han Qingyu. It barely took a step; leaning slightly forward with its body angled, it glided across the ice with electric speed.
Just how much hatred was there!
Boom! Red Shoulder's massive frame whipped up a howling wind. Along the arc of its turn, the black column sword in its right hand lashed out diagonally upward like a cracking whip—whoosh—hurling toward Han Qingyu as he descended from the air.
Han Qingyu had nowhere to dodge, nor did he try to.
By all logic, he could only block now, but he did not block either.
Suspended in midair, his source energy erupted again like a tidal surge. Han Qingyu lunged forward until he was nearly parallel to the ground, both hands slashing his dual blades horizontally from left to right with all his might.
Using the reactive force of the slash, he drove his body into a reverse spin from right to left, evading the black column sword hurtling through the air.
Offense and defense merged in a single maneuver.
"Whoa!"
This shift atop the cliff drew gasps of astonishment across the mountain!
Then—bang!
A hit! It landed! Both blades in Han Qingyu's hands struck Red Shoulder's shoulder and back simultaneously.
Yet... he broke through no defense.
The combat blades merely left two shallow fissures on Red Shoulder's shoulder, completely failing to cut into its flesh.
Han Qingyu's consciousness cleared for a brief instant, but it was already too late.
The force of the column sword Red Shoulder had swung with its right hand was spent, but it bent its left elbow and rammed backward.
Thud!
Han Qingyu took the blow full-on. He flew backward off the cliff into empty air, tumbling back into everyone's sight.
At the same time, Red Shoulder's figure came to a halt at the cliff's suspended edge, its hulking frame standing towering and immovable.
"Is that... Red Shoulder?!"
"It's Red Shoulder!"
"...Quick!"
"Where are the super combat powers?!"
Only at this moment did the people down the mountain clearly see that the figure on the cliff was Red Shoulder.
Shouts rang out in every language.
Han Qingyu hung in midair, beginning to fall.
Whoosh... buzzzzzz—a black spear tore across the sky with a heavy vibration, propelled by immense, solid force directly toward his feet.
Wu Xu's intention was to give Han Qingyu something to kick off of to arrest his descent so he wouldn't crash straight down.
Everyone thought the same. At this point, King had no choice but to retreat.
Yet what followed was nothing of the sort.
Han Qingyu stepped down onto the black spear in midair. As the shaft dipped, he altered his movement from falling to rising, and from flying backward to surging forward.
Then—whoosh! Accompanied by another booming surge from his source energy apparatus, he kicked off again. This kick landed squarely on the butt of the Binggu Spear.
Driven by the force, the spear plummeted like a bolt from the heavens, piercing toward the ground.
"He..." The surrounding battlefield was stunned. Facing Red Shoulder directly and heavily wounded in a single blow, he was actually going back?!
When Han Qingyu first stepped onto the Binggu Spear, both dead iron straight swords had already left his hands, spinning through the air ahead of him. At the same time, he drew the blue starlight column sword from his back, gripping it with both hands.
His second kick off the spear yielded force like a massive explosion. Leveraging that momentum, he shot forward in a straight line with electric speed, his body spinning through the air as the column sword whirled before him, boring straight toward Red Shoulder in a rotary thrust!
How tremendous was the force of this thrust?!
The black spear he had kicked toward the earth struck a charging black-armored Great Spike head-on, piercing completely through it and pinning it to the ground.
Chapter 265