No Retreat in Battle

The second-to-last cabin deck of the mothership was also the site of the Great Spike traction field. Roughly less than two minutes ago, Han Qingyu had seen the small Red Shoulder depart with his own eyes. At that time, he was still hiding inside an iron chest. Yet he had felt two successive, violent tremors shudder through the mothership's hull, and heard two thunderous booms of shattered earth and rock... and then came that continuous, massive surge of energy fluctuations. Involuntarily imagining the brutal fighting on the surface, Han Qingyu pushed open a crack in the iron chest door he had already closed. Through the opening, the iron wall had parted once again within his line of sight, revealing the operation of the entire traction field. There, dozens of crackling electric arcs, twisting like miniature lightning bolts, connected between a dozen-odd strange metal pillars in the chamber. Bursts of light beams and energy fluctuations surged from the traction field into the night sky... The mothership's ceiling seemed to have opened on its own. The metal blocks inside the traction field were melting away at astonishing speed. Then the iron wall slid shut, and the small Red Shoulder left... leaving roughly thirty blue-sheened Great Spikes inside the iron wall to guard the traction field. Afterward, Han Qingyu stepped out from the iron chest at the exact moment the small Red Shoulder emerged outside the mothership. Perhaps because the mothership's outer hull had opened for a moment, the sounds aboveground had grown much clearer at that instant. Han Qingyu heard the fierce combat in the distance, heard the gasps of shock at the appearance of yet another Red Shoulder, and finally that shout: "Bury it under our bodies!" Then the sounds grew muffled and indistinct again. On this subterranean deck after the Great Spikes had departed, Wu Xu and Rusty Sister emerged from their iron chests one after the other. "Qingzi, what's wrong, Qingzi?" Rusty Sister called softly from behind. Seeing no response from Han Qingyu, she stepped forward and asked with concern. Because she had obediently followed orders and kept the chest door tightly shut, apart from the shuddering of the ship and the two loud booms, she hadn't seen what had just unfolded, nor had she seen the activated traction field. Now, in her eyes, Qingzi was staring intently at an iron wall, seemingly lost in thought. "Qingzi?" "Hm?" Han Qingyu looked back. "Are you all right?" "...I'm fine." Han Qingyu offered a faint smile. In truth, he was wrestling with a choice—an unavoidable yet agonizingly difficult decision: whether or not to attack the traction field. His habitual pre-battle composure kept his emotions from growing agitated or tense. He simply calculated in dead calm: roughly thirty blue-sheened Great Spikes, plus a condensed source energy field that would blast me away the moment I crashed into it, plus a traction field whose level of danger was completely unknown. He weighed the situation with utter serenity: Under these circumstances, if Rusty Sister goes, she'll die, right? If Wu Xu goes, he'll die too. And me... maybe I will as well? Finally, he held a quiet dialogue with himself: If they don't make it in time—and they really might not—then the next step will likely be the arrival of the Great Spike main army... Judging from how things look... if that happens, the current Azure probably won't be able to hold them back, right? Yes, they definitely won't. And then what? End everything I have now, leave Azure, leave Squad 1777, go back and gather my friends and family, and start running... But where could we run? Mom and Dad definitely wouldn't want to give up the life they have now. And me... I suppose I wouldn't either, not entirely. So... I have to go. A decision to gamble life and death was reached just like that, through a self-negotiation devoid of any grand heroism. Han Qingyu thought to himself: *Damn it, if I'd known, I would have stayed a good-for-nothing. Why does it have to be that throwing myself into the mix might actually work... Whatever, let's just say I can't bear to let those big metal blocks go. I just want to snatch them... Mm, thinking of it that way, my heart's actually stirring. I feel much better already.* He smiled. "Qingzi." Wu Xu stood to the side, gripping the Binggu Spear, his head tilted as he observed Han Qingyu's expression. "Yeah." Han Qingyu turned to look at him, then at Rusty Sister, and smiled easily. "Come on, let's pull out." "Huh?" Rusty Sister was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. "Okay." The two of them turned around, only to realize Han Qingyu hadn't moved, so they looked back at him once more. "You two head out first. Get a head start, and remember to take the bone... that piece of jade." "What about you?" "I'm going to grab some metal blocks. It'd kill me to leave empty-handed." Han Qingyu grinned, tilting his head toward the stairs leading up. "In case there are Great Spikes up there, I can get in and out faster on my own..." "Go on, tsk, move it! How many times have I told you? In our squad, don't pull that clingy, sentimental crap that gets people killed. You haven't forgotten, have you? Go, don't drag me down." He began to look impatient. Wu Xu and Rusty Sister exchanged a glance... "Mm. All right, then." "Hurry up, okay?" The two turned around, retrieved the bone from the iron chest, and walked over to the stairwell leading down. They looked back once more, only to see Han Qingyu shooing them away. Turning again, they headed down into the lowest hold. *** On the surface battlefield. Bury a Red Shoulder under bodies? The experience from the battle in Siberia thirty years ago told them that this was nearly impossible, not to mention that behind this small Red Shoulder stood more than thirty blue-sheened Great Spikes... Yet no one hesitated. In the desperate charge to the death, three fell... Ten fell... Twenty fell... Those behind them pressed forward, throwing themselves into the slaughter. "Hey, wait! Let me." "Stop! Out of the way, let me do it." Hindi, English—voices called out from behind... Some understood and looked back, while more didn't understand, but turned their heads all the same. A figure whose right arm and entire chest were bound together in bandages walked up from the snowy slope with slightly hunched shoulders, moving with visible difficulty, and came to a halt behind them. The man had darker skin. With half a cigarette dangling from his lips, he stood there. "Akshay Kumar!" the Indedu soldiers shouted. "Lieutenant General!" Akshay Kumar, holding the rank of lieutenant general, was one of the two super combat powers fielded by Indedu in this battle, and an idol to countless young soldiers in the Indedu Front. He was the one among the six super combat powers who had been severely wounded earlier, yet he had never left the battlefield. *Pfft!* Akshay Kumar spat out the cigarette butt. Using his only mobile left hand, he drew his blade, his movement slightly slow. *Shhh... clink.* As he drew his blade, he spoke. "This time, it was our Indedu Front's mistake. In the future, everyone must work harder," he told his country's soldiers in Hindi. "In the future, humanity will win. I firmly believe it," he said in English. As the words fell, his blade pointed forward... and his figure shot forward like a rainbow shadow. Cao Min was knocked to the ground by the surging source energy tides. He didn't know how he would ever describe this strike to anyone if he had the chance in the future. But he roughly understood now: this was what the power of a super fully burning their life force looked like. After a thunderous collision, the small Red Shoulder's chest was sliced open, and it was blasted back into the mothership. The mothership's iron wall shattered under the impact of its own body... A breach allowing a direct attack on the traction field had appeared. And Akshay Kumar simply stood there, motionless. Suddenly, the blade in his hand shattered... and then, his entire body began to fracture. August 28, 1991, 00:32. At merely thirty-four years of age, Lieutenant General of the Indedu Front and Azure super combat power Akshay Kumar fell in battle atop the snowy peak of the Mount Xilang battlefield. Amid the rumbling resonance of source energy, Azure soldiers of every nationality surged past him, charging into the Great Spike mothership. The Indedu soldiers shouted his name: "Akshay Kumar!" Among the Eastern and Western faces, some tried to chant along, while others roared "Azure!"... No retreat in battle. Yet, "Where's the Red Shoulder?" The wounded small Red Shoulder was nowhere to be seen. Nor could any trace of the traction field be found. Only another iron wall and nearly fifty blue-sheened Great Spikes barred their way. "Kill!" *** Separated by perhaps two decks, Han Qingyu heard that shout of "Kill!" Azure's elites had already breached the mothership, but it seemed they were blocked once again. Then came heavy footsteps, drawing closer. The Red Shoulder? Han Qingyu hid swiftly. At the same time, already running on all four turbines, he forcibly consumed three more metal blocks... storing power for a desperate, life-or-death strike. Dripping blood all the way, the small Red Shoulder clutched its chest as it descended the stairs. If it had looked back carefully at that moment, it would have discovered four holes drilled into the iron wall outside the traction field, marking the four corners of a rectangle. But it did not. The wounded small Red Shoulder seemed anxious. It strode straight down the corridor, passing the iron chest where Han Qingyu hid, and came to the iron chest that had held the jade bone. Without touching it, the alien opened it... It froze for a moment. A strange string of syllables escaped its mouth. *That's the voice that gave the command.* Han Qingyu had heard it several times now, and was basically certain. Whether because of its grave injuries or not, the small Red Shoulder did not conduct a thorough search. After a brief hesitation, it turned around, clutching its chest, and climbed back up the stairs to the deck above. *Maybe they have a reserve of jade bones up there?! Or maybe it has something more urgent that it must finish right now.* Guessing as he went, Han Qingyu stepped out of the iron chest once again. He stood firm, looked at the iron wall, his body swelling with energy as the four turbines surged continuously, stacking wave upon wave... preparing for the final breaching blow. *** On the surface battlefield, outside the mothership. "Look... its energy fluctuations seem to be shifting!" a coalition commander pointed into the night sky, shouting anxiously. Liu Yiwu pulled his gaze back and nodded. "Mm." That grunt was heavy, for such a change likely meant the traction array was entering its second phase. The next moment, the commanders charged into the mothership. Another iron wall stood in their way... The elite fighters and top combat powers were fighting desperately at any cost to slaughter the encircling swarm of blue-sheened Great Spikes. Despair was spreading. At the same time, in the Great Spike mothership's command room on the deck below, the ceiling had likewise opened outward. The small Red Shoulder stood before a complex, bizarre disc, looking up at the night sky above. Behind it was a blue-light craft. "Everything will be completed..." it spoke to the night sky. At this moment, the silent night sky and the brutal battlefield intertwined. The command post down the mountain attempted to observe through the collapsing ice and snow. Soldiers forced away from the main battlefield fought desperately to claw their way back to the summit. Over thirty thousand Azure soldiers who had survived the bloody battle were waiting... *Boom!* A colossal blast suddenly echoed from deep within the lower deck of the mothership; followed by *clang... crash...* as shattered iron shards blasted against the iron walls. The small Red Shoulder heard the noise and frowned in confusion, suddenly remembering that bone—it shouldn't have been completely depleted... The Azure commanders above heard it and looked at one another blankly. "It's that kid! He... he's attacking the traction field!" The moment Liu Yiwu figured it out, he roared at the top of his lungs. The commanders beside him shouted in jubilation, their spirits blazing as hope rekindled. "It's him! It's The Qing... He's still here! He's attacking the traction field!" "Help him... Quick, help him! Charge down!" Liu Yiwu kept roaring. There was a Red Shoulder down there, and who knew how many Great Spikes... Commander of the Huaxia Front's First Army, General Liu Yiwu boldly drew his blade and threw himself at the swarm of Great Spikes, charging at that iron wall. Behind him, the commander of the Nepal Front scooped up a piece of the iron wall that had just been smashed off the ground and rammed it toward the iron wall ahead. Most of the iron walls inside the Great Spike mothership were not nearly as sturdy as the outer hull. *** Iron plating shattered. Without the slightest hesitation, Han Qingyu blasted a massive hole through the drilled iron wall. Brandishing the blue-light column sword, he threw himself past the iron wall, hurtling toward the traction field. "...Stop him." The thirty blue-sheened Great Spikes present lunged at him from all directions. *Boom!* The blue-light column sword cleaved down. Column sword clashed against column swords. The four Great Spikes directly barring Han Qingyu's path saw their column swords shatter before his ultimate strike, sending them flying backward. The metal pillars were right in front of him. Han Qingyu prepared to throw himself in. Yet *boom*—this sound rang only inside Han Qingyu's mind. Then, the moment before he could slash his sword into the metal pillar, his entire body was blasted backward through midair by the condensed source energy field. *Damn it, how come the smaller it gets, the stronger it is? If I'd known, I would've tried throwing the column sword...* Han Qingyu spewed blood midair and slammed onto the floor. At the same time, more than twenty blue-sheened Great Spikes surged out of the traction field and pounced toward him. His breath and surging energy flagging, Han Qingyu was struggling to scramble to his feet. A ferocious rush of wind whistled behind him... *Crash!* A suit of iron armor, wielding a slab of iron plating as a shield, slammed straight into the cluster of Great Spikes and knocked them aside. Rusty Sister had pried loose the slab of iron wall that had been drilled open down below. "Qingzi?!" At the same time—*whoosh!*—a black spear over two meters long shot straight and heavy before Han Qingyu, spearing into the chest of the foremost blue-sheened Great Spike directly in front of him. Wu Xu's figure materialized before Han Qingyu. Without a word or a moment's hesitation, "*Ahhh!*" This usually silent block of wood let out a beast-like roar at that moment. The screech of soles rapidly scraping across the deck rang out as Wu Xu pressed against the black spear with all his might, driving forward... desperately driving forward, checking and pushing back four blue-sheened Great Spikes lunging from the front. His arms were not enough to hold them, so he braced his shoulder against the butt of the spear. *Pfft.* The spearpoint was razor-sharp, piercing straight through the chest of one blue-sheened Great Spike. *Pfft.* The spear butt was blunt and flat, yet it punched right through the hollow of Wu Xu's shoulder.