"Don't blame Wu Xu. Shouting that out really is tough. How about this: from now on, we just keep the name to ourselves and don't announce it to anyone."
Han Qingyu talked it over with Wen Jifei while sheathing his battleblade back across his back. He then turned around, hoisted an oversized backpack onto his shoulder, and said, "Let's go."
As the instigator of this whole thing, Second Lieutenant Wen naturally enjoyed it, but having to shout it out stiffly like that really was awkward—far more awkward than when Han Qingyu had first been led in chanting the Azure slogan back then.
Among the three of them, Rusty Sister's personality had grown increasingly playful by the day, so she treated the whole thing as fun and amusing. Her situation wasn't bad, and she could barely stomach it. Once she accepted it... she even started itching to give it a try.
Han Qingyu could manage. Living with Wen Jifei for all these years, he hadn't learned much else, but when it came to placating Wen Jifei, he was thoroughly adept.
The hardest one was Wu Xu. His attitude toward anything was always dead serious, so in a situation like this, he inevitably felt the most awkward.
"Don't announce it? If we're not going to announce it, what the hell was the point of picking a name?! Names are meant to be shouted loud and clear! Leaving a name in history, going down through the ages, renowned for a hundred generations, notorious for eternity—haven't you heard of any of those?"
Wen Jifei sheathed his blade, grumbling with an aggrieved pout.
Inwardly, he thought the main issue was that he was with the wrong crowd right now. Once he tracked down He Tangtang and Liu Shiheng... the three of them could act it out with relish for a whole day, and even work out the order and squad formation for announcing their names.
He also bent down, hefted an oversized pack, and slung it across himself.
Then Wu Xu picked up one.
"Second Lieutenant Wen, why don't you give that one to me?" With only three large packs in total, Rusty Sister had empty hands. She teased Wen Jifei, "Going downhill won't be easy walking."
"I'm fine, consider it my workout. Besides, even if I take a tumble, you guys can catch me." Wen Jifei shook his head, engaged his apparatus, and stepped—sprinted—forward, saying, "You just focus on reading the map."
Lately, while Han Qingyu and the others were happy that Wen Jifei had finally forged a path of his own, Plague-Chicken Fei himself knew very well:
In this world of source energy, he had basically hit the ceiling of his combat capability and battlefield utility.
If the Dice issue remained unresolved, and firearms powered by source energy with dead iron bullets never emerged... then what he could achieve on the battlefield right now was pretty much all he would ever be able to achieve. It was impossible to play a greater role.
The only aspects he could still improve were his physical conditioning, stamina, and further adapting to the momentum of the Dice's inversions.
This was what he meant by a workout. Now, sprinting at high speed with his source energy apparatus engaged, he no longer tripped and fell as frequently as before.
Second Lieutenant Wen could now preliminarily control and utilize the momentum of the source energy surge.
As a Dice, there was no one in Azure who could share experience with him on these things, not even Captain Milla, who had personally taught him to shoot. Everything had to rely on his own fumbling, experimentation, and training.
In this way, they spent another day traversing mountains, waters, and wilderness, encountering a few squads and locals along the way. They drew closer and closer to their destination, Nganglaring Tso, and the sky darkened once more.
"Get down, everyone." In the dusk, Wen Jifei suddenly dropped flat by the roadside, calling out in a hushed, urgent voice.
"What is it?" Rusty Sister responded.
At the same time, the three of them hurried to lie flat as well.
"Look for yourselves, don't look at me. Look over there."
Beside the mountain path was an earthen mound. Looking down through a breach in the mound, far in the distance, a black-armored Great Spike stood there blankly like a wooden post.
Except for looking left and right every once in a while, and gazing up at the sky for a bit... it barely moved. Even when it did move, its movements were sluggish.
A Great Spike! A Great Spike meant a shuttle craft, and a shuttle craft meant metal blocks... Having finally found one, Han Qingyu felt a surge of excitement, itching to rush up and chop it down immediately. But on second thought, he suddenly remembered something else...
"Wu Xu, remember what you said this morning?" To the side, Wen Jifei turned his head, stared silently at Wu Xu for a moment, and said, "You said you'd say it right next time."
Wu Xu replied honestly, "Yeah."
"Then go on. Go out, announce your moniker, and then chop it to death."
Of the three beside him, any one of them now had the strength to solo-kill a black-armored Great Spike. Wen Jifei meant for Wu Xu to go, but insisted he had to first tell the Great Spike who he was from Azure, Stream Vanguard.
A true man's word was worth a thousand pieces of gold. Wu Xu was earnestly working himself up.
Growing up in the Yu clan, he had received a traditional education as well, having read some ancient texts that taught proper conduct and occasionally seen opera plays. He broadly understood that this belonged to the realm of shouting battlefield challenges; if he went, his opening cry could not lack momentum.
*This is so hard. Do I really have to shout a challenge at a Great Spike? And even if I say it, it won't understand.*
"Plague Chicken, quit messing around. Wu Xu, ignore him," Han Qingyu spoke up abruptly, stopping them. "I've got something serious to tell you."
Wu Xu nodded and silently breathed a sigh of relief, turning to Han Qingyu. He knew that since Qingzi said this, it was truly something serious. Otherwise, Qingzi would definitely love to hide to the side and watch him shout challenges at a Great Spike.
Han Qingyu was just that kind of person.
"What serious thing?" Shen Yixiu had already drawn her blade halfway, but pressed it back into its sheath and asked.
"This one looks a bit dull. Let's try and see if we can capture it alive," Han Qingyu said.
He still owed Xin Yaoqiao a live Great Spike.
Catching on instantly, Wen Jifei looked at the Great Spike, then back at him. "But how do we catch it? Without hurting it..."
Han Qingyu turned his gaze to Wu Xu and Rusty Sister. "Remember how you two treated me in the jeep yesterday? When you snatched my ledger."
"Just like that. You two go up, grab its arms, and try to pin it down. Then I'll dive in and tackle it."
...
Logically, there should have been two of them, but after thoroughly searching the vicinity, they found no trace of the other Great Spike. The shuttle craft was indeed there, sitting in a crater right in front of the black-armored spike below the slope.
"Maybe the other one died on the way," Han Qingyu analyzed.
"Or maybe they had bad chemistry and went their separate ways the moment they got off the ride," Wen Jifei offered another possibility, turning to glance at Wu Xu. "There's also another possibility: the other one said it was going out to scout the way, left, and couldn't find its way back."
Wu Xu: "..."
"Shh. Look at it."
Rusty Sister pointed, directing their gazes toward it.
In their sight, the black-armored Great Spike gripped its column sword, slowly turning the tip toward itself and resting it against its belly.
"Fuck! It's not about to commit seppuku, is it?! Move, fast!"
*Whoosh! ... Whoosh!*
Rusty Sister and Wu Xu dashed out, one after the other.
In the darkness, the figures moved like lightning, kicking up dust from the ground. With a clattering crash... Iron-armored Second Lieutenant Shen locked both arms tightly around the Great Spike's right arm.
It was so sudden that the Great Spike was completely bewildered. It turned its head, saw Rusty Sister... and abruptly began to struggle violently, swinging its arm to shake her off.
Unfortunately, it couldn't shake her off at all.
"'Don't do something rash! Don't die, why are you being so foolish?' 'No, leave me alone, let me die, I really don't want to live anymore.'" Wen Jifei looked at Han Qingyu and said, "Well? Doesn't it feel like that?"
Han Qingyu nodded. "Yeah, a bit."
In their sight, the black-armored Great Spike struggled frantically a few times. Seeing it had no effect, it finally raised its left arm holding the sword, preparing to sweep across.
However, *snap-crack*.
Its left arm froze at its side.
Wu Xu finally found an opening and locked his arms around the black-armored Great Spike's left arm in a tight bearhug.
Just like that, one on the left and one on the right, the two pulled with all their might to keep the Great Spike from moving... The scene was bizarrely grotesque.
"Whoosh!"
As Han Qingyu burst forward with power, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Hold it!"
"Yeah."
*Crack!*
After a crisp snap, the Great Spike suddenly could move, dragging Wu Xu along as it bolted forward.
"..." Rusty Sister stood frozen in place. She looked down at her hands, then turned her head back toward Han Qingyu. "Not my fault."
In her embrace, she was now clutching the entire thick arm of the black-armored Great Spike.
"Is... is this damn thing even a proper Great Spike?!"
Wen Jifei chased after Han Qingyu, eyes wide and jaw dropped.
"Hraagh!" Not far away, a furious roar erupted. Wu Xu gritted his teeth, exerting desperate strength, and single-handedly managed to drag the madly charging Great Spike to a halt.
If he were carried off... it would be very hard to find his way back. The plateau was so vast and the terrain so complex, plus he had no communicator on him... He might very well have had to say goodbye to Qingzi and the crew right then and there.
"Nice, Wu Xu, you—"
*Crack!*
Amidst the crisp snap, Han Qingyu swallowed back the rest of his sentence. With a sharp *skrrrt*, he braked to a halt.
Less than ten meters away, Wu Xu had stopped as well, standing there clutching an intact Great Spike arm in both hands. What made his even more impressive was that the severed arm was still gripping the column sword.
After two seconds, Wu Xu turned his head back, looking at Qingzi with embarrassment.
Ahead of him, the black-armored Great Spike, now missing both arms, swung its head left and right in a bizarre posture, splaying its legs wide as it kept sprinting wildly into the distance.
"Suddenly reminds me of when we were kids," Wen Jifei ran up and halted beside Han Qingyu, saying.
"Huh?"
"Catching crabs."
"..."
"Back home, snapping off one claw made it Yang Guo... Now with two off, Yang Cun?"
Yang Cun ended up self-destructing after all. After it had sprinted four or five hundred meters away—just when Han Qingyu thought there really was a chance to capture it alive, and was even pondering how they'd need to bandage it up quickly once caught—it seemed to finally realize that it was injured and beyond saving... and abruptly began to self-destruct.
Afterward, the shuttle craft self-destructed as well.
Once the shower of fragments settled, Han Qingyu picked up the metal block from the ground with less unadulterated joy and excitement than usual, stowing it away... At any rate, they were finally back to twenty-six blocks.
Wu Xu and Rusty Sister each held a Great Spike arm, standing beside him and watching him. These were the only things that hadn't self-destructed, for reasons nobody knew.
"Then what do we do with these?" Rusty Sister asked, holding out the Great Spike arm with both hands.
"What else can we do? Roast 'em. The claws have meat too..." Wen Jifei rubbed his hands together and said, "Seriously, just think of it as a crab. What if it's delicious... By the way, we happen to have salt in our packs, and a bottle of dark soy sauce."
In the end, after reaching the vicinity of Nganglaring Tso, Han Qingyu found a Huaxia Front squad and handed the black-armored Great Spike's two arms over to them, asking them to help carry them back, and inquired about Squad 1777's whereabouts along the way.
"No idea," that squad leader replied, cradling a Great Spike arm in each arm like foreigners in movies holding extra-large baguettes. "Along the way, everyone's been scattered to do rescue and search operations. Nobody can keep track of who's who anymore."
By this time, night had fallen almost completely.
Having fought three battles along the way, Squad 1777 of the Azure Huaxia Front was currently advancing toward Purang in the darkness.
According to the map, Nganglaring Tso was to the west-northwest, while Purang was to the southwest, nestled right on that corner wedged into Nepal's territory.
Chapter 310