Under the shroud of night across the dark grassland, Great Spikes and enemies lurking in the shadows had trapped an ordinary Pakistani squad and three civilians in a desperate plight.
An off-road jeep appeared before them.
In the span of a few moments, Iqbal had swung from elation to desolation. He no longer harbored any hope of survival; his squadmates were all back there... He tried to tell the Azure comrades before him, his reinforcements: "There are too few of you—only four. It's nowhere near enough."
With no shared language, Iqbal pointed and counted heads with his fingers, desperately trying to convey his meaning. His entire demeanor was frantic and anxious.
Then, as his finger landed on the man before him for the second time, the man told him, "I am The Qing."
At that moment, Iqbal froze, dazed. When he looked up, the tearful eyes he had just wept from began to gleam with light.
In truth, on the battlefield of Xilang Peak, the pronunciation Iqbal had heard and believed to be correct was "The King."
Yet that did not stop Iqbal from swiftly and immediately connecting the two. He did not even pay attention to Han Qingyu's actual pronunciation.
Just as he failed entirely to notice that when Han Qingyu spoke those few short words, he looked thoroughly awkward and uncomfortable.
'So it's The King! It's the man from Xilang Peak—he and his teammates are here.'
Straightening his posture, Iqbal began to tremble with excitement. He had just endured fear and despair, helplessness and loss, and agony. Now, all those emotions were swept away... leaving only endless indignation and hatred.
"Kill them!"
Although the young Pakistani soldier had a mustache above his upper lip, his face was still green, and he clearly was not old. Trembling with excitement, he bordered on grief-stricken hysteria.
Tears and snot ran down his face together.
"Kill them! Please! King, please! Kill them! Kill..."
Just as he knew only a few simple Chinese phrases, the English words Iqbal had mastered were few, all picked up on the battlefield.
And so he kept repeating them, almost pleading, a fire of hatred burning in his bloodshot eyes.
"OK... okay."
So it wasn't just Great Spikes; there were people, enemies.
Azure warriors had fought Great Spikes for so long that no matter how dire the predicament, battle against Great Spikes never provoked that kind of suffocating indignation.
"So, there are Great Spikes—blue-sheened, right? And then what else... Where?" Sitting in the jeep, Wen Jifei tried to communicate patiently.
"..." Unable to understand one another, Iqbal looked bewildered and frantic, his hand gestures shifting incessantly, mirroring the urgency in his eyes.
He wanted to tell The King the direction where his squad was fighting the Great Spikes, yet he feared that doing so would cause him to overlook the enemies hiding in the dark.
"Big ones... blue, black," the man from the family of three suddenly spoke up from the side, turning and raising his arm to point in a direction.
His Mandarin was poor and halting, but understandable.
"And people, many." With his gaze, the man gestured around almost the entire perimeter of the dark wilderness... then looked at Iqbal and said, "His friends... killed."
Confirmed. Han Qingyu nodded.
"Lots... lots of bad guys." The little girl huddled in her father's arms spoke up abruptly, her eyes fixed on Han Qingyu. Her tear-streaked eyelashes were long, and her fluttering eyes shone all the brighter through her tears.
"Yeah." Han Qingyu's response sounded slightly thick and heavy in his throat.
In the faint light, the tip of the little girl's lips was red, trembling uncontrollably, wet with tears and snot.
Han Qingyu took another look, then turned to confirm the direction with Iqbal.
"One each. You two go relieve the others and hold the line for a bit," he said to Wu Xu and Rusty Sister.
"All right."
With two whooshing booms of erupting source energy, the clang of long blades unsheathing resonated, and a black spear howled as it tore through the wind.
"I'll take the blue-sheened one," Wu Xu said.
"Mine," Rusty Sister's voice said. "Or else I won't carry you over."
Wu Xu: "..."
The two silhouettes vanished into the night.
That left Han Qingyu, Wen Jifei, Iqbal, and the family of three.
"Doesn't sound too far," Han Qingyu said after listening intently for a moment.
"Yeah. They probably heard the engine and are creeping over. Most likely want to confirm our numbers first." The jeep's engine hadn't been killed, though the headlights had been turned off earlier. Wen Jifei remained in the driver's seat, staying put.
"I'll go over for a bit, then."
"Sounds good."
What those people lurking in the darkness were doing was logically obvious... Having answered, Ensign Wen lowered his head, fished a cigarette pack from his breast pocket, drew out a cigarette, struck a flame to light it, and muttered a curse.
Just a day ago, this wheel-striking lighter of his had singed Ye Jian's eyebrows.
Wen Jifei stowed the cigarette pack away. Han Qingyu turned and made a two-handed gesture, signaling Iqbal and the family to stay by the vehicle and not move.
He walked forward.
The rustling of grass blades in his ears felt closer and closer in the dark. Han Qingyu hesitated, halted in his tracks... took off his autumn jacket, turned around, and walked back in front of the little girl, suggesting playfully:
"Let's play hide-and-seek, okay?"
The little girl looked at him, hesitated a moment, and—likely because she had just been told to behave—gently nodded in the end... then used her two little hands to cover her eyes.
"No, cover your ears." He had almost said 'little ears'... Han Qingyu reached out and gently shifted her tiny hands over to her ears.
The little girl pressed her ears tightly with both hands, but opened her eyes and blinked hard at Han Qingyu... then looked at him in mild confusion.
Han Qingyu smiled, gently cupped her cheek, and guided her head to bury into the crook of her father's shoulder. "This way you won't be able to see either."
Then he draped his autumn jacket over her body and head, covering most of her tiny frame.
The autumn night on the plateau was cold; this would likely keep her warmer as well.
Having done that, he glanced at the couple. He saw the mother shift her position to shield her daughter in the middle with her back while the girl nestled in the father's arms, the parents each holding down a corner of the jacket.
Nodding in approval, Han Qingyu gave another slight smile. He turned and walked about twenty to thirty meters out before stopping once more.
This time, he unstrapped the rectangular black wooden box from his back, set it on the ground, and slid the lid open. Inside, the blue starlight column sword was still wrapped in tattered curtain fabric. This was a new skill he had gained after consuming the bone source, one he hadn't used yet.
When he straightened back up, he stepped forward diagonally toward an earthen slope.
In the night, two soft clicks sounded.
Major Qing drew his twin blades.
...
The earthen mound was not large and rather low; it took only a few paces from the foot of the slope to reach the crest and head down the other side. At this moment, some thirty individuals of various complexions were crawling cautiously along the reverse diagonal slope in the dark.
Insects hopped among the blades of grass.
A moment ago, something seemed to have made a faint sound in the air.
After a quiet murmur of discussion, the leaders of the group began crawling diagonally toward the top of the mound.
They needed to determine how many people had arrived. If many, they would flee. If few, they would kill them. Then they would dump the civilians deeper in to force Azure squads into rescue operations. They needed to draw more forces away from Xilang Peak.
They were almost at the crest. Suddenly, a grass insect crawled across the nape of one of the squad leaders.
Twisting his neck, the leader raised his head, missed swatting it, and lowered his head again.
'Wait, something's wrong. Just now it seemed like a shadow was standing there.'
Suspicious, the leader looked up again and took a look... Indeed, a shadow stood atop the mound a short distance to the side.
He swiftly whispered a warning, and everyone around him looked up...
"Snow Lotus?" Before they could speak, the shadow asked of his own accord.
For a moment, no one answered.
"Does anyone among you understand Chinese?" Han Qingyu asked again, helpless.
"Just one man? Relieve him of purgatory!" someone below the mound said in Chinese.
"So it's Pure Purgatory," Han Qingyu remarked with a smile, noting that they seemed to be elites, given that their devices were quite decent. "What a coincidence. Before I even joined Azure, I killed some of your people, and that's how I earned my very first medal upon enlisting."
"You are..."
The one who understood Chinese looked over, hesitating in thought over the details in Han Qingyu's words.
Yet that didn't stop the others below the slope from drawing various weapons, activating their devices, and standing up.
"Run!" the voice that had just spoken Chinese suddenly roared.
The crowd below the mound instantly descended into chaos. Some seemed ready to attack, while others reflexively turned to flee into the night, only to be stopped at once by those beside them.
There was only one person opposite them!
Just then—vroom!
The roar of an engine suddenly surged, followed by the brief screech of tires spinning on turf... Then, with a loud thud, two glaring headlights blazed to life, shining directly upon them.
The vision of all thirty-odd Pure Purgatory fighters was momentarily dazzled by the beams.
Once they briefly adjusted, they looked up.
An off-road jeep was parked not far away, its headlights on. A figure was standing up in the vehicle; his right hand swung from behind him to the front, and a thick, long sniper rifle swept out along with his arm.
At the same time, his left arm crooked inward, forming a horizontal rest.
In the end, the stock and barrel of the sniper rifle in his right hand settled firmly across the crook of his left arm, locked in place.
"Sorry, none of you are leaving. You're surrounded."
Yet—"A gun?..."
Voices in several languages erupted at once, accompanied by derisive laughter. Seeing a sniper rifle leveled against them, the members of Pure Purgatory laughed in relief.
"Yes, a gun," Wen Jifei said with a grin. Bang! He abruptly pulled the trigger, firing the first shot.
In the distance, a figure sprinting through the dark crashed to the ground.
It was the man who had just spoken Chinese. While his accomplices were laughing in relief, he had already slipped to the rear of the crowd and begun bolting alone into the dark.
He had likely realized who the two men before them were, especially the one who had spoken to him. That was why he had chosen to run—and to slip away first on his own... The expanse was wide open; all he needed was to plunge into the darkness.
Yet right in the middle of his sprint, amid the rapid movement of his feet, a massive, high-powered bullet struck with pinpoint accuracy right into his lifted heel midair.
The shot was partially resisted by his body's near-instinctive source energy defense and failed to inflict a grievous wound. But he fell... his center of gravity knocked off in full stride, his rhythm shattered... He hit the ground hard, then moved swiftly, preparing to scramble back to his feet.
Snikt! An Azure battleblade, having silently spun out of the dark without anyone noticing, slashed cleanly across his throat.
In the end, he rose only halfway... before collapsing again, motionless.
Dead? Dead! He had tried to run and had even made it some distance, yet he was dead. The Pure Purgatory fighters present stood dazed for a few seconds before panic suddenly seized their eyes.
Now, they finally realized with chilling clarity: they truly were surrounded.
The ethereal echo of the gunshot gradually faded in the air.
In her father's embrace, the little girl curled in slightly.
In the darkness, the faint hum of a spinning blade could still be heard...
"Now, does anyone else have questions?!"
Standing in the bright light, Wen Jifei flashed a fierce, ferocious grin. The muzzle of his sniper rifle swept back across them. At the same time, with a flick of his left thumb, a military-grade high-power flashlight switched on in his propped left palm.
The beam of the flashlight reached far into the distance, pointing in the exact same direction as the rifle's muzzle.
No one was leaving.
Chapter 306