Marching through the night, they maintained no tidy formation and made little use of lighting equipment.
The squad didn't take the highways. Moving between ridges and open plains, they searched for Great Spikes to eliminate while trying to find any plateau residents scattered in remote pockets.
Mountains, near and far, were plentiful yet not particularly tall. In daylight, most stood bare with exposed earth or sparse patches of vegetation; under the cover of night, they were reduced to faint, brooding silhouettes.
Water was not hard to find either. Though mostly concealed beneath the grass, it softly murmured across the open wilderness to guide the way, or could be found by following animal tracks.
Along the route, the grass varied in depth, though it all looked much the same in the dark. Night had fallen completely. Being the beginning of the lunar month, the moon was a slender sliver; fortunately, a bright river of stars spanned the plateau sky.
In such an environment, getting lost was all too easy. Beside a stream where livestock drank, Lao Jian stopped and turned to motion for his squad to rest where they were.
He sat down on a rock once used by herdsmen to tether horses. Pulling a map from his pack, his fingers reached for a flashlight and, along the way, thoroughly stroked the three metal blocks resting at the bottom of the bag. The corners of his mouth curved up in smug satisfaction.
Squad 1777 had already engaged in three battles, facing only black-armored Great Spikes. The fighting had gone relatively smoothly, and although a few were wounded, they had suffered only minor injuries.
Squad 1777 was not weak.
Even without Han Qingyu, Rusty Sister, and Wu Xu present, this carefully handpicked team still possessed around four figures capable of serving as ordinary squad captains, plus at least six formidable fighters qualified to hold the vanguard position of the main battle line.
Among them was the current He Tangtang.
He Tangtang possessed a natural Grade B+ degree of fusion, and woven into his innate warrior's temperament was an extra streak of vicious ruthlessness. In ordinary sparring and combat training, his practice partners were three top-tier youngsters; on top of that, Han Qingyu constantly fed him source energy blocks and equipped him with top-grade weapons...
This time, with those three absent and the squad without its third line, He Tangtang had suddenly been reassigned to a key role in the first line, temporarily anchoring the primary vanguard position. The combat prowess he displayed was already striking enough to turn heads and leave others stunned.
"Captain Lao, can I talk to you about something?"
Lao Jian had been studying the map for a while, with He Tangtang attentively holding the flashlight beside him. Only when Captain Lao began folding the map did He Tangtang finally speak up.
"Hmm?" Lao Jian glanced over at him. "Go ahead."
"Well, how about permanently giving me your spot as the primary vanguard in the first line from now on?" He Tangtang quickly followed up with an explanation: "Going forward, I'll still train with Qingzi and the guys, but I'll fight with the first line. Being in the third line next to Qingzi and the others was making me a bit too comfortable."
"Heh, screw you, keep dreaming!" Lao Jian scoffed disdainfully. "I let you play around with it for a few days, and now you want to kick me off?! Don't forget I'm your captain. The first line's primary vanguard, the one facing the Great Spike head-on... is forever mine."
With that, he lowered his head and coughed a few times.
"Actually, Captain Lao, right now you..." He Tangtang wanted to say that Captain Lao might not even beat him in a fight now... and adding "might" was already putting it very politely.
Lao Jian glared. "What did you say?!"
"I mean, the crucial thing is you have to command, Captain Lao! If something happens to you, our backbone is gone... That's what I meant."
He Tangtang hastily gave a fawning explanation, worried that if Lao Jian got mad, he might strip him of the primary vanguard spot right then and there.
Several veteran squad members sitting nearby chuckled softly.
Under the night sky across the desolate wilderness, the laughter rippled back toward the rear of the column.
Liu Shiheng sat down next to Military Doctor Yu, who was accompanying the squad this time. Exposing a gaping horizontal cut on his right arm, he asked, "Brother Yu, does this cut of mine really not need another look?"
Doctor Yu glanced at it and replied confidently, "No need. As long as the bleeding has stopped, it's fine."
"It won't get infected, will it? After all, the Great Spike's column sword..."
"If a Great Spike's column sword could leave a cut that tiny and shallow, then during the next fight, I'd go up and stab it to death with a syringe." Doctor Yu gave a dry laugh, leaning in to whisper, "You scraped it on a rock when you tripped, didn't you? Screw you, we don't even know how long we have to march on this mission. Save me some medicine."
"Ha, fair enough... alright then." Liu Shiheng wasn't embarrassed; he laughed along as he answered, though he seemed visibly subdued.
Indeed, who knew how much longer they would have to keep pressing forward, how many more battles they would fight, or what they might suddenly run into. Sitting with his head bowed, he took a twig and doodled aimlessly on the ground.
Liu Shiheng was in a bleak mood. He suspected he would never truly fit into this squad.
As Wen Jifei had once joked: Young Master Shiheng always acts like an outsider standing on the sidelines, watching from a completely detached perspective while the rest of us fight tooth and nail, celebrating or despairing. All he focuses on is counting each time he manages to make it out alive.
Liu Shiheng had fled in Nepal, gone home, and later returned on his own. Part of that was not wanting to drag down Han Qingyu and the others, but undeniably, an equally important factor was knowing the sheer reach of Azure—if he were formally reported, he would never truly escape in the end.
He had tried to push himself, but failed every time. Liu Shiheng could never find a single reason why he had to fight. He wasn't strong; he was a coward; Azure was hardly short of one extra soldier like him... Even if humanity was truly doomed to perish, couldn't they let this young master go back, enjoy life to the fullest, and then die?
He would rather wait for humanity's collective doom. Better if everyone just died in one clean sweep when the time came; that way, he wouldn't have to think, wouldn't have to flee, and wouldn't have to struggle and face it time after time like this.
This time, Squad 1777 had no Qingzi, no Rusty Sister, no Wu Xu, not even Wen Jifei. And He Tangtang's head was filled with nothing but hacking and slashing... Liu Shiheng was terrified something would go wrong. He was certain disaster would strike, growing increasingly restless and uneasy with every step forward.
In the dark, some squad members murmured and joked, some closed their eyes for a brief nap, and others drank water or grabbed a bite to eat. The crunching of footsteps moved from the tail of the line straight up to Lao Jian.
"Captain Lao, I suddenly feel like something's not right," Liu Shiheng said, stopping before him.
Lao Jian looked up, giving him a puzzled glance.
"We split off from the main force yesterday morning, right? At first, we could still run into a few squads heading in the same direction, but gradually there were none. We're the only ones left still heading south," Liu Shiheng said. "It's very likely that for dozens of li around us, there isn't another squad... They might have already changed course, or maybe even turned back... Why don't we turn back too, Captain Lao?"
"No matter the direction, every squad was deployed to spread out and search like this. You idiot, what kind of nonsense analysis is that? Rest easy, there are squads over at Purang." Lao Jian tried his best not to expose Liu Shiheng's real motives.
Although communications were spotty and difficult because the combat engineers' makeshift base stations couldn't keep pace, he had received orders from command via the Rejecters just before nightfall: destination Purang, keep advancing.
Although the local residents had already evacuated en masse with the Huaxia regular army earlier, in the haste, isolated pockets in the mountainous areas were bound to be overlooked.
Besides, the Great Spikes wouldn't refrain from landing there just because no humans were left.
With any pretense of reason in his suggestion thoroughly punctured, Liu Shiheng grew anxious. "Then what if we run into a blue-sheened Great Spike out of nowhere?! What if there are two blue-sheened ones... how do we fight that?! Are we just throwing our lives away?!"
"If we can't beat them, we can retreat first. Legion Commander Chen has joined the command at Xilang Peak for this operation, and he didn't issue suicide orders."
As Lao Jian spoke, he stood up, stepped closer, and clapped Liu Shiheng on the shoulder.
Marching in isolation through an unfamiliar region genuinely induced far greater panic than usual. Lao Jian understood Liu Shiheng and wanted to soothe his frayed nerves.
"But Captain Lao, I really don't want to go any further. I'm not going." It wasn't spoken in anger, but Liu Shiheng's emotional composure had shattered all at once.
Glancing ahead at the endless, pitch-black wilderness, he turned back with panic in his eyes, choking back sobs as he whispered, "Not a single one of Qingzi's group is here. I really don't want to keep marching. Why can't we stop and wait for them? They'll definitely come find us."
Lao Jian looked at him and shook his head. "By your logic, should every Azure squad without top-tier fighters turn and run?!"
His voice remained low, but the chill beneath his calm demeanor began to surface.
"Alright, Shiheng. You're probably just exhausted. Healing wounds really can cause a fever. Hurry up and get some rest." Afraid that Liu Shiheng would undermine morale and infuriate Captain Lao and the veterans if he continued, He Tangtang stepped forward and slung an arm around Liu Shiheng's shoulders. Exerting quiet force, he dragged him aside and pushed him down to sit.
Then he offered him a cigarette and lit it for him.
......
After another two hours of marching, a passing shower swept across the sky. By the time Squad 1777 found shelter from the rain, it had already stopped. Lao Jian thought it over and decided to let everyone sleep where they were to catch up on rest.
Only three hours of sleep had been allotted. Aside from two sentries on watch, the exhausted squad members practically fell asleep the moment their heads touched the ground.
Liu Shiheng was still at the rear of the squad. He Tangtang was already snoring beside him, but Liu Shiheng couldn't sleep at all.
To stave off his mounting dread, Liu Shiheng deliberately thought back to a few old flames from the entertainment clubs in Gangcheng... but his mind kept snapping back from those glamorous memories to reality.
"Fuck this shit... staying here will get me killed; I'll really end up dead." Looking up at the open sky outside, Liu Shiheng muttered under his breath.
The words vanished silently into the pitch-black wilderness, but two seconds later, they began echoing in Liu Shiheng's mind like a roll of thunder, reverberating on and on.
"If I go fight, I'll die. If I run away, I'll die too... What if I both run away and die?! Let them believe I ran off and died."
"I won't go home. I have money anyway, and my old bank accounts. Where couldn't I survive?"
"If I hide out for eight or ten years, either the whole world will be gone, or all the Great Spikes will have been hacked to pieces and Azure won't exist anymore. Even if neither happens, by then Qingzi will at least be a full general, won't he?"
"This plateau is so vast, so chaotic, and the forces taking part in this operation are a mixed bag too. There are so many casualties and accidents every single day..."
The more Liu Shiheng thought, the harder his heart pounded against his ribs.
"The Great Spikes in the rear must have mostly been cleared out by now. Any route I take could lead me out, right?" Turning back from here, even alone, Liu Shiheng was confident he could find his way out. Because he had been praying for Qingzi and the others to catch up, he had been leaving markers the entire way.
"There won't be another chance like this."
"I'm sorry, everyone. I'm sorry, Qingzi, Plague Chicken, Tangtang..."
There was no time to dwell on it further. Liu Shiheng deliberately made a little noise, took a sip of water, and slipped three bank passbooks from his person—each containing two million—into He Tangtang's backpack. They all knew the passwords anyway.
After that, he lay back down and waited a moment. Once certain no one was watching him, Liu Shiheng crawled quietly to the side, into the tall grass.
Crawling from the front slope of the hill all the way to the back... he engaged his apparatus and began to run.
He ran like a madman.
The howling wind chased at his back.
He ran a long distance, rounding the back of another hill. As long as he circled around here, he could pick up his marked route, find an opportunity to fake his death after fleeing, and break away from the battlefield once and for all.
The military situation is critical; Captain Lao and the others definitely won't come after me...
"Fuck your mother," a tall figure—or rather, a silhouette bearing a blade on his back—stood waiting on the high ground of the mountain pass. "Fuck your mother, Liu Shiheng."
"...Tangtang?" Liu Shiheng froze in his tracks, his body stiff. He forced an awkward laugh. "You noticed early on?"
"What do you think?" He Tangtang had noticed. He had noticed when Liu Shiheng's silhouette was still on the slope. The reason he hadn't shouted out on the spot and had instead tracked him this far... was because if he had called it out right there, Liu Shiheng would have been conclusively branded a deserter, facing military law.
"Come back with me. We'll just say we went out to take a leak and chat," he added with suppressed fury.
Liu Shiheng didn't budge. "I'm not going."
Clang. He Tangtang drew his blade.
"Don't try to scare me. You can't bring yourself to do it... and I'm not going back with you," Liu Shiheng said.
"Heh," He Tangtang gave a cold chuckle. "I won't hack you. Knocking you out will do just fine, and I'll carry you back on my shoulder."
With that, blade in hand, he walked over and flicked his wrist to turn the flat of the blade outward.
"..." Liu Shiheng watched him approach. At first he laughed... but then it turned into tears, his face contorting and grimacing, sobbing hideously like a worm. "Why are you keeping me? What's the point of making me stay? Huh?!"
He Tangtang paused. Because honestly, there really wasn't any point.
"There's really no point in me staying in Azure, none at all! If I hadn't met Qingzi, trash like me would just be cannon fodder! Cannon fodder, you understand? Whoosh—one swing and gone, dead long ago... If I were in any other squad, I would've been executed under military law for cowardice in the face of the enemy!"
He Tangtang still didn't say a word.
Liu Shiheng carried on by himself: "If I were Qingzi, or Wu Xu..."
"Even if you were, it wouldn't matter. Giving you their talent wouldn't change a thing, because no matter how great their talent is, they're risking their lives every single time," He Tangtang said firmly. "Why don't you think about Plague Chicken?"
Liu Shiheng fell silent for a moment. "Yeah, I respect Plague Chicken... but I'm just not him! Is that so wrong? I'm terrified of dying, alright?! Haven't you guys known that all along? Didn't Qingzi know?"
"He knew, but Qingzi never looked down on you."
"Right! So besides being looked after and wasting Qingzi's source energy blocks, I haven't done a damn thing... So why do you insist on keeping me? The circumstances are special this time. My running won't drag anyone down... So please, don't tell them. Don't tell Qingzi, don't tell Plague Chicken..."
He Tangtang's brows furrowed in thought.
"Just let me go, Tangtang. Treat it like I died. Treat it as if you never had me as a brother to begin with." Liu Shiheng's knees gave way. "I'm begging you, Tangtang. I'm begging you."
He Tangtang sidestepped, dodging the gesture.
Liu Shiheng knelt on the ground, weeping.
Suddenly, he felt movement behind him. Clang! His dead iron war blade was drawn by He Tangtang and thrust into the earth right before him.
This blade belonged to Liu Shiheng, but Zhang Dao'an had once borrowed it to slay Great Spikes—more than one. When Zhang Dao'an fell in battle, he had still been holding it in his hand.
"Before you leave the battlefield, remember to leave this blade somewhere your Azure comrades can see it." He Tangtang sorted through everything in his head... and made his decision. Turning his back to him, he finally asked, "Can you make it out on your own?"
Liu Shiheng, who had just gripped the blade to move forward, froze stiff in place.
"Yeah," he nodded.
He Tangtang said nothing more, nor did he turn back to say farewell.
Liu Shiheng didn't dare look back either. He kept walking until he left the valley, found the markers he had left behind, and vanished alone into the night of the wilderness.
Chapter 311