"Your... Huaxia, Qing!" A foreigner bandaging an emergency wound found a fellow wounded soldier from the Huaxia Front beside him, grimacing in pain yet smiling warmly as he pointed toward the cliff.
"Yes, Qing, but... back where we're from, there are many," the soldier explained as best he could while beaming with pride. "Me, my name has Qing too."
"Oh~" The foreigner tilted his head back, thought for a moment, and turned back to ask, "The Qing?!"
"Yes!" Roughly understanding that adding "the" was meant to specify that particular one, the soldier broke into a radiant smile, nodding vigorously as he chimed in, "Yes! The Qing!"
"The Qing..." Proud of himself, the foreigner turned to his comrades and the bystanders to share his newfound moniker, repeating and passing it along, "...The King!"
On the Xilang Peak battlefield of 1991, an inadvertent moniker had perhaps just been born.
Around the same time, at the position of the Long Blade Squad—who had just slain a pack of seven Great Spikes—Captain Lu Chengzhong pulled back the hand he had been about to clap onto Cao Min's right arm, where blood was seeping through the cloth of his sleeve... Captain Lu instead gripped the young soldier's shoulder and asked, "What is it?"
Cao Min's gaze flicked away, then returned to the cliff. "Is he all right, Captain Lu?"
"Judging by his movements just now, he shouldn't be in serious danger, though his consciousness might be a little muddled for the moment," Lu Chengzhong said, his eyes also fixed on the broken cliff.
"That's good, then." Cao Min withdrew his gaze with a thoughtful expression, then suddenly gave a bitter smile.
"What is it now?" Lu Chengzhong asked upon noticing.
"Nothing much. Just... last time, I challenged him to a duel when we got back." Cao Min was obsessed with martial prowess, notorious throughout the Sixth Army as a duel fanatic. "And I've already put the word out..."
"Huh?! Hahahaha!" Lu Chengzhong burst out laughing, which pulled at the wound on his chest. Grimacing in pain, he consoled him, "Don't worry. Keep going at this rate, and sooner or later you'll reach top tier."
Cao Min looked up at his captain. "Will I be able to beat him at top tier?"
"No way."
Meeting his gaze, Lu Chengzhong spoke with blunt honesty.
Cao Min: "..."
"However, once you reach top tier, if anyone dares mock you over this, you can just beat them up." Lu Chengzhong's gaze was completely sincere.
"..." That actually made some sense, Cao Min thought. Plus, that way he would have an excuse to pick fights with people anytime.
"Once you've beaten everyone into submission and terrorized them, this whole thing will be as good as forgotten, right?" Lu Chengzhong continued, suddenly coughing twice as blood seeped from the corner of his smiling mouth. "Except for me... I'll definitely go around telling everyone."
In an instant: "Hahahahaha..."
All the battered, scarred brothers of the Long Blade Squad around them burst into roaring laughter.
Helpless, Cao Min glanced around, turned, drew his blade, and leaped down from the position.
"Xiao Cao, where are you going?! You..." The veterans meant the blood on his right arm...
"Looks like the Great Spikes won't be coming our way anytime soon, so I'm heading down to chop up a few rounds to help out." Cao Min held his blade and looked back. He glanced at his arm first, then looked up, a provocative smirk tugging at his lips. "It's nothing, just a scratch... After all, I'm young and can take a beating, right? You old-timers... Hahahahaha!"
With a laugh, before the veterans could react, Cao Min turned and bolted toward the area below the position as if fleeing for his life. That sector could be counted as a forward blocking position anyway, so he was not really breaking formation; it was merely behind a slope, out of everyone's line of sight.
"When he said 'old-timers' just now, he gave you a particularly hard stare, Captain Lu."
"Sounded like he's planning to beat you up too in the future, Captain Lu."
"What do you mean 'sounded like'? That kid has mumbled in his sleep more than a few times about knocking Captain Lu flat on his back... Seriously, Captain, he's obsessed with it. I heard it with my own ears."
"Yeah, I heard it twice myself."
While bandaging their own wounds, the veterans gleefully stirred the pot and fanned the flames.
Lu Chengzhong looked around at the conditions across the position, exchanged a glance with the vice-captain in charge of command, and drew his blade as well. "I'll go show him just how wide the gap is, and teach that brat how many eyes Lord Ma has."
With that, Captain Lu leaped down from the position as well.
Cao Min easily fell into a near-frenzied state in battle... Once the bloodlust took over, he paid no heed to whether he lived or died.
"So Captain Lu really does dote on that kid," the veterans on the position said with chuckles.
By this time, the heavily wounded Red Shoulder had been forced away from the main battlefield, caught in a coordinated kill by three Azure super combat powers. Yet the blue light of the mothership overhead still shone, alarms blared once more, and commands continued to be issued; the swarm of Great Spikes showed no signs of collapsing into chaos, growing even more frantic instead.
The battle raged on.
"I got it! I really got him—the storm of the spinning thrust, and him with the Azure banner..." Crouching behind an icy boulder, Ashleia's body practically bounced with excitement. Her current position was not far below the broken cliff, reached after braving danger all the way up.
From roughly a forty-five-degree angle, she had just managed to capture several profile shots.
"These are photos that had to be taken. Thank goodness we came up," Ashleia said, her eyes welling with redness once again despite herself.
"Shh! You'll definitely be proud of your byline on those photos in the future, I promise, Miss Ashleia. But right now, please stop talking and moving. I want you to make it back safe and sound."
Ian hurried to dissuade her, trying to quiet Ashleia down. They had penetrated far too deep into the battlefield; hiding in this position, they could run into mortal danger at any second.
Yet Ashleia still began to creep forward slowly. "I have to get a frontal shot," she said.
"No, absolutely not! Don't even think about it," Ian insisted, grabbing Ashleia firmly. Though in truth, he desperately wanted to capture some frontal footage as well.
"How about I go... Give me the camera," Ian said after a moment's thought.
"But you aren't any stronger than me," Ashleia countered.
"...True, but the difference in strength between us is completely meaningless here. And I'm a man."
"Gender is just as meaningless here. In any case, I'm stronger, so I should be the one to go," Ashleia said stubbornly.
The argument between them went no further, for at that very moment, the figure of that Huaxia soldier on the broken cliff had already vanished.
Reinforcements arrived, taking up defensive positions on the cliff ridge.
The two froze, then looked at each other, instantly filled with regret and guilt, as if they had failed their duty.
Until, suddenly, cheers erupted from another direction...
...
August 27, 1991, roughly 8:10 p.m.
Below the circular defensive perimeter on the Asian battlefield of Xilang Peak, three Azure super combat powers—Lü Moyi of the Huaxia Front, Samit of the Indedu Front, and Dietrich of the Germany Front—joined forces to slay the Red Shoulder.
Thirty years after the Huaxia God of War, Chen Buer, had slain a Red Shoulder on the battlefield, mankind had once again achieved victory against a Red Shoulder.
The soldiers locked in bitter combat roared and cheered, an immense and steadfast conviction descending upon the Xilang Peak battlefield, settling onto every single person's war blade.
Ashleia pressed the shutter of her camera again and again.
Ian slipped from sheer focus, stumbling onto the ice, yet all the while he held the video camera high.
Amidst this uniquely jubilant scene, at a certain moment, people invariably turned their gazes once more toward that broken cliff, and toward the banner still standing atop it... for something perhaps even more momentous and awe-inspiring than the final killing blow had just taken place there.
The history of Azure and mankind must, and inevitably would, add a heavy stroke before the record of this kill:
[On this day, Private Han Qingyu of the Azure Huaxia Front... seized the sword, severed an arm, and single-handedly inflicted grievous wounds upon the Red Shoulder atop the icy cliff of Xilang Peak.]
The Red Shoulder began to self-destruct.
A storm of flying shrapnel surged up and soon rained back down. A severely wounded Indedu soldier found that object on the ground before him: the Red Shoulder's Shattered Star Insignia.
This was the dead iron insignia borne by Great Spikes. Because the emblem depicted shattered stars, Azure had always referred to it as the Shattered Star Insignia. It turned up during every routine collection of spoils, except that the Shattered Star Insignias of ordinary Great Spikes were never preserved; they were melted down alongside the rest to forge dead iron weapons.
The Shattered Star Insignia was also made of dead iron, but because it sat as an independent protrusion, it usually survived the Great Spikes' self-destruction intact.
The one before him now: a design of two shattering stars set upon a palm-sized disc of dead iron, with a red streak slashing diagonally across it.
In nearly a century of Azure's history, there had been only one Shattered Star Insignia bearing this design and coloration. That piece was now in the hands of Chen Buer, Commander of the Huaxia Front's Sole Witness Legion. Only replicas were kept and displayed across various nations to inspire morale.
The wounded Indedu soldier looked at it for a few moments, struggled to his feet, and with boundless excitement hurried over to present it to the Indedu Front's super combat power, Samit.
At that moment, Samit was swapping out a source energy block while doing his utmost to contain the surge of emotion within... In the end, he could not stop tears from welling in his eyes... His name would be carved into Azure's history as one of the slayers of the second Red Shoulder.
To every Azure super combat power, this was an achievement they had once looked up to, and later dreamed of attaining.
Taking the Shattered Star Insignia, Samit gazed at it for a moment, a hint of reluctance and yearning in his expression. In the end, he shook his head with a smile, walked over, and let Dietrich, the super combat power of the Germany Front, have a look as well.
Dietrich merely looked and touched it. Then the two turned around and, with looks of pained reluctance, handed the Red Shoulder's Shattered Star Insignia over to Lü Moyi of the Huaxia Front beside them... before breaking into smiles.
According to the tradition handed down from Chen Buer's time, this Shattered Star Insignia was meant to be kept by the slayer of the Red Shoulder. There were three slayers here, all of them Azure super combat powers. Therefore, rather than sharing ownership among them, it was better to...
Lü Moyi looked up at Samit and Dietrich, accepted the Shattered Star Insignia, and smiled. "Aren't you afraid I'll keep it for myself?"
Amid laughter, the three super combat powers charged back onto the battlefield once more.
Chapter 267