"Could it be... with them, raising one's hands just happens to mean telling them to end their own lives? How was I supposed to know? Talk about a short fuse..."
Liu Yiwu felt quite awkward on the spot and hurriedly tried to explain himself, even complaining about the short-tempered nature of the small Red Shoulder.
At the same time, Han Qingyu silently sounded out the syllables the Red Shoulder had just uttered twice in his head. If that was a word or phrase, it seemed to have been directed at him, and it had sounded like a question.
"Yanxiu?" Setting aside the peculiar vibration and eerie cadence of the voice, it seemed to approximate those two syllables. Of course, that was merely an approximation; in reality, it wasn't an exact match.
*What on earth is Yanxiu?*
*At least among the deduced ranks of the Great Spikes that Yaoyao-huanghuang secretly told me about, there didn't seem to be anything like that...*
Han Qingyu relaxed slightly and committed it to memory, intending to ask Xin Yaoqiao later.
Then he lifted his eyelids and looked up. "Rusty..."
"I'm here, I'm right here. Qingzi, are you all right?" Rusty Sister squatted down and asked gently, her voice still raspy from her recent weeping.
Han Qingyu's mouth moved. "Bone..."
With just that one word, Rusty Sister understood immediately: Han Qingyu was reminding her about the jade bone. Even though it was hard to fathom why, in his current state, his first concern was still whether the loot had been secured, she was already used to it... Lowering her voice, Rusty Sister quickly reassured him:
"It's here, tucked away. Word has it they found another one inside, so we don't have to hand ours over."
A shift appeared in Han Qingyu's eyes—first a trace of relief and joy, followed by a fleeting pang of heartache that anyone else would find hard to comprehend.
He spoke again: "Sword..."
"Right here! Your column sword is right here. Look, I've got it. Don't worry, battered as you are, they wouldn't dare come ask for it," Rusty Sister said, showing him his blue column sword.
"You..." Han Qingyu tried to shake his head, without much success, and squeezed out another word.
"Ah, me?... Do you mean the smaller one? For me?" Rusty Sister asked in a hushed, tentative voice, her eyes burning with eagerness.
There had been another blue column sword—the one wielded by the Red Shoulder down below, which was currently in God Lü's hands.
In that case, Han Qingyu figured he should stash away whatever he could get his hands on first, and deal with it later if the higher-ups actually sent someone to demand it back... What if they were too embarrassed to ask?
After all, look at the mess he had resolved, and look at the state he had ended up in.
Earlier, the small Red Shoulder's blue column sword had been knocked flying during their midair clash. With the burst of light erupting in the sky back then, almost no one below could see clearly, but he hadn't forgotten to keep an eye on it... Han Qingyu continued to force words out: "North."
"North? Down the slope?... Mm, alright, I'll go fetch it." Rusty Sister started to get up, but looked down at Han Qingyu and squatted right back down. She didn't feel comfortable leaving him.
"I should go instead. Keep an eye on Qingzi. I'll be back in no time." Wu Xu, likewise drenched in blood, his entire body currently battered and churned by surging energy, stepped forward as soon as he spoke.
He stopped, hesitated, and then turned back. "Um... where is north?"
Rusty Sister hurried to point out the direction.
Wu Xu nodded, turned back, took another step—and whoosh, failing to control his strength, tumbled straight down the snowy slope... Every second brought splitting agony that tore at his internal organs; likely only a blockhead like him could endure it.
Han Qingyu listened to him scramble back to his feet, silently tallying up what else should be gathered but hadn't been. *Those metal blocks...*
The metal blocks remaining in the traction field had to weigh at least one to two hundred jin.
This was the first time in his life he had measured metal blocks in jin, but sadly, there was simply no way to retrieve those.
...
By the time Wu Xu finally found the smaller blue column sword and sneaked back with it hidden, nearly three hours had passed.
And he had clearly claimed he would be back in no time.
Atop Xilang Peak, the crowd lingered.
Aside from giving the critically wounded basic treatment and sending them down the mountain, the summit commander had refused to allow large-scale support units and medical teams to ascend before daybreak.
The matter at hand was far too crucial to Azure, and indeed to the course of human history. The contents of the Great Spike mothership were immense; it appeared highly likely to offer far more than mere research specimens for source energy spacecraft technology.
They could not be sure whether infiltrators might lurk among those yet to ascend, and in the interest of caution, they maximized their precautions.
Han Qingyu was a special case. He was injured, yet could not be touched and refused to let anyone touch him, so he also remained on the mountain.
Only now had he begun to recover a little.
Rusty Sister was helping him sit up.
"What do you say now, Captain Lu?" Beside a snowdrift on the east side of the mothership, Cao Min of Long Blade lit a cigarette for Lu Chengzhong, grinning cheekily. "You already delivered your last words just now, yet here you are sitting in one piece asking me for a light. Doesn't that feel a little awkward?"
In that moment earlier, when bodies barred the sky, Lu Chengzhong had yanked Cao Min back and charged up himself, genuinely never expecting to return alive. That was why he had left Cao Min with that single parting command: "Do Long Blade proud."
And yet, here he was. Lu Chengzhong turned his head, a flare of annoyance in his eyes as he glared helplessly at Cao Min, before smacking him right across the back of the head.
"Hehe." Cao Min didn't dodge, ducking his head to take the blow. When he looked up again, his eyes were somewhat rimmed with red. "Back then, I was honestly... honestly terrified you wouldn't make it back, Boss."
Lu Chengzhong looked up at him. Just as an emotional expression seemed to settle over his face, he suddenly snorted with laughter. "Piss off."
Then he pointed toward the other side, aiming a finger at a figure who had just sat up from the snow. "If you're really that moved, go over there and kowtow to him. Say thank you on my behalf... If not for him, I really might not have come back."
"Sure, kowtow it is... Wait, no, I can't." Cao Min shook his head. "I was planning on becoming buddies with him in a bit. I can't kowtow. That'd make me look like a subordinate generation."
Lu Chengzhong smiled.
"By the way, Captain Lu, do you know what was going through my head when I fell to the ground and looked up at you?"
"What?"
"I was afraid I'd never beat you in a blade fight for the rest of my life."
"..." Lu Chengzhong was silent for a moment. "*Ahem.* So what they said was true. Day and night, all you think about is beating me with a blade. What, planning a mutiny?"
"Not at all," Cao Min replied. "No mutiny here. Once I beat you, I'll just wait to take over your spot. By the way, Captain Lu, you treat me so well that I've always had a question in the back of my mind..."
"Out with it."
"I'm not your illegitimate son, am I?"
"..."
"Think about it. I grew up in an orphanage, and during those years, someone was always sending me money and supplies under a fake name. Then, what a coincidence, you just happened to bring me into Azure... So, did you cheat on your wife back then? Am I Qingqing's biological older brother?"
Lu Chengzhong roared, "Bullshit! What kind of nonsense are you spewing? Believe me, I'll beat you within an inch of your life!"
Commotion erupted in the Long Blade defensive sector.
Around the same time, White Eraser Captain Wei Jiang sat down in the snow beside Han Qingyu. He pulled out a cigarette, offered one to Han Qingyu, lit one for himself, and held out the lighter.
This time, Han Qingyu did not refuse. Though he did not smoke, he still leaned in to light it, holding it between his lips and letting it burn on its own.
Too much had happened this night. Now that everything had finally calmed down, unusual emotions were spreading within him as well.
"Liang Ge is gone. While guarding the mothership, he blocked a sword strike from a blue-sheened Great Spike."
"Yeah, I just heard," Han Qingyu said.
"Did you? Good. He was obsessing over this right up to the end, insisting I tell you that he was a total badass this time around."
"He was. Genuinely badass." Han Qingyu spoke without the slightest falsehood. That was the courage and sacrifice of a man charging straight into an alien blade; anyone would have to respect and admire it.
"If he heard that, he'd definitely be gloating," Wei Jiang said with a faint smile, then added, "One more thing. He said... even though he couldn't beat you, he simply refused to accept it."
Having passed along all of Liang Ge's words, Wei Jiang took the cigarette from his mouth and fell quiet.
Han Qingyu said nothing either. He had never truly hated Liang Ge. Perhaps in the beginning, but not later on; when Liang Ge provoked him later, he had sometimes even found it amusing. In any case, Azure needed men like him who never bowed or gave in—Azure would always need them.
After sitting for a while, Wei Jiang said his goodbyes and headed back.
Han Qingyu remained seated, the cigarette half-burned between his lips.
*Click.*
Down the slope to the side, a flash went off.
Han Qingyu quickly turned to look.
A foreign girl holding a camera stood there, accompanied by Yin Caixin. She was speaking in English, earnestly trying to explain something to him.
"Ashleia says she's a war correspondent, and she hopes you don't mind," Yin Caixin translated, having arrived on the same plane as the woman and being quite familiar with her.
"Oh." Han Qingyu nodded slightly. "What about you? You're injured, why haven't you gone down yet?"
"My injuries were already treated, not critically situated."
Her phrasing was still slightly awkward as she spoke, leading Ashleia up the slope.
After brief exchanges of greetings, the reporter girl immediately rattled off another rapid string of foreign words.
"Ashleia says she knows you are exhausted, so could she ask just one question? It's the kind where she has no choice, she just has to ask, feeling compelled, losing sleep over it," Yin Caixin explained, then said, "She wants to ask: when you were doing those things—she means everything tonight—what were you thinking at the time, and how did you manage to do it?"
"Oh, why does she need to know that?" Han Qingyu asked.
"Because she's a war correspondent," Yin Caixin replied matter-of-factly.
*I see.* Han Qingyu gave it some thought: How should he answer so that it sounded convincing without pushing him toward the image of a noble, self-sacrificing hero?
He didn't want that kind of towering image; first, he wasn't mentally comfortable with it, and second, he worried that one day he wouldn't be able to climb down from that pedestal.
"Honestly, there was no specific thought, and it wasn't complicated," he said. "In that split second, I just slashed my blade. I'm not good at many things, so I just focus on doing this one thing well."
"...Meaning, slashing with a blade. Got it? If you got it, translate that."
Han Qingyu looked at Yin Caixin.
Yin Caixin stared at him, looking dazed for a moment, then nodded and translated.
Ashleia wrote down the answer, expressed her thanks, and left. True to her word, she asked only that one question and did not disturb him further.
Yin Caixin, however, did not leave. Sitting beside him hugging her knees, she hesitated for a long while before suddenly saying, "Mister."
"Hm?"
"Um... what if I sacrificed myself to marry you? What... what would you think?" Turning her head to look into the distance, the girl asked, "Would you have me?"
Chapter 283