When Lao Jian returned for reinforcements with the wounded of Squad 1777, as captain, he still did not know the truth about the "enemy." Han Qingyu and Wen Jifei had kept it from him for the time being—it was a form of protection.
However, atop Xilang Peak, the invincible commander of the Huaxia Front's Sole Witness Legion had already been tipped off while peeing side by side with Han Qingyu earlier, so Chen Buer could guess it.
Thus, on a level invisible to ordinary people, a silent struggle between Azure's Chen Buer and Alphonse had in fact already begun.
One was the strongest Star of Azure in human history; the other was the first-generation Star of Azure.
Relatively speaking, Alphonse had stayed in the shadows for far too long, and Chen Buer did not know this first-generation Star of Azure very well. Fearing there wouldn't be enough time, his urgent broadcast had mainly been intended to make his stance clear and persuade Alphonse to stay his hand.
Yet Alphonse's stance had already been declared the moment Sean appeared on the grassy knoll with his men—kill first, talk later.
Suspicion and knowledge were useless; without evidence, nothing held up. So once they were dead, anything could be reasoned away.
After the kill, at most there would be political wrangling and legal tug-of-war. As the pride of all West Europa, Alphonse had his own backing and immense influence, so he was hardly worried about that. Moreover, he had plenty of time and energy to play the long game.
At the same time, not a single person—including Han Qingyu—knew that someone else had already begun a game against Alphonse several days ahead of this.
Compared to Chen Buer or Alphonse's standing in Azure, he was an ant-like nobody. His name was Wen Jifei.
Earlier, when the four of them parted ways with Lao Jian and Squad 1777, Wen Jifei had deliberately lagged behind to tell Lao Jian which nations' elite squads he could borrow soldiers from. On one hand, it was truly a battlefield necessity, but on the other hand, he had already begun placing his pieces in the game.
"Still too green, and the methods are clearly unpolished, but it's quite impressive that he even thought of it. More importantly, to dare challenge an elephant as an ant takes commendable courage. And to pull it off quietly without making a sound is rarest of all."
This was the appraisal given with a smile by the nameless old staff officer beside Chen Buer atop Xilang Peak.
Chen Buer didn't understand any of that. Neither did they know the exact situation out there right now. The old man sat there, rubbing the hand-rolled cigarette between his palms, and said, "Anyway, winning the fight comes first."
...
The moonlight illuminated the grass until every blade and stem shone clear and cold-white. Deep in the highland night, the wind blew chilly under the vast and open expanse of sky and earth.
Ahead, the twenty-two men still stood on the grassy knoll in an uneven row. Some had drawn their weapons and held them in hand; others had not.
Han Qingyu set the unstrapped black wooden box casually on the ground, looked up at them, and began walking forward.
In truth, when Sean had appeared there with his men and stood motionless just now, the silent threat had already been made: if Han Qingyu chose to run, Sean's men would intercept and slaughter everyone present.
Even now and for a certain window of time afterward, they had every ability to catch up to the exhausted cavalcade of herders and children.
Han Qingyu understood this, which was why he hadn't said a word, calmly dismounting and staying behind.
Conveniently enough, he wanted to hack them to death too.
Squad 1777 had suffered few casualties since its formation, but this time, five were already confirmed dead. Many others, including Qin Guowen and Qi Rourou, were critically injured, the entire squad carried wounds, and Milla was gravely wounded as well... with He Tangtang's fate unknown and his whereabouts unaccounted for!
Footsteps. "Whir, whir, whir, whir!" The sound of erupting source energy shattered the silence.
Without a word, a team of four silently charged straight down the grassy knoll toward Han Qingyu, striking the instant they clashed.
When the first man rushed before him, Han Qingyu did not draw his blade. Shifting his footing, he dodged aside and appeared behind the man. In panic, the man whipped around, slashing horizontally...
The slash hit empty air. Han Qingyu still stood right behind him.
This was what Wen Jifei had previously named the "Eighteenth-Generation Snake-Charming Clan Sidestep" or something like that... the name was too convoluted, and Han Qingyu couldn't quite remember it.
He reached out, grabbed the back of the man's neck, and hoisted him into the air.
The motion was fast, so fast that the hoisted man couldn't react at all. But the others watching from a distance could still clearly see their comrade's body first sagging naturally downward, then suddenly snapping in half with both head and feet bent upward.
"Boom!" Han Qingyu's source energy erupted.
Crash!
He slammed the man headfirst down onto a boulder.
The stone shattered. The man collapsed to the ground, twitching helplessly.
Han Qingyu continued walking forward.
The second man charged before him, his war blade cleaving with unyielding momentum.
Relying on his speed advantage, Han Qingyu shifted slightly—just one step to clear the edge of the blade... With a swish, he drew a blade, and then—thud!—slammed the hilt into the man's back... and kept walking forward.
The crunch of breaking bones rang out, and the second man collapsed behind him.
The remaining two of the first group did not advance any further.
"Seems you really are the real deal." On the grassy slope, Sean, bearing a knight's longsword on his back, spoke for the first time. It was Chinese. Then he uttered a few phrases in French.
With the command given, the nineteen men besides him swiftly formed a battle array.
Han Qingyu glanced over, turned his hand, and drew the second blade from his back. With a flick of his right wrist, he reversed his grip on the war blade.
"Azure, Han Qingyu. Service number 771209, rank of major. Dual-blade configuration. Files evaluate your left-hand blade as slow and your right-hand blade as fast, but in truth your left hand strikes with greater force—and my guess is it's actually faster. You aren't left-handed; you trained it deliberately. Overcoming habit, intentionally concealing it to ambush people—everything about you is prepared for battle.
"I hear your combat power fluctuates, growing stronger the more you fight."
It was standard, fluent Chinese; he could even use slang like "ambush people." At the same time, Sean—or rather, the Alphonse family—had clearly prepared and researched a great deal about Han Qingyu.
In this situation, it felt improper for Han Qingyu not to say something. Who knows, maybe I can convince him to duel me one-on-one?
Knowing almost nothing about Sean, Han Qingyu considered it and said, "Your Chinese is very good."
Sean nodded. "I studied it for a long time. Because in Azure's confidential archives, there is an essay on combat insights written by Legion Commander Chen Buer over twenty years ago that my clearance level allowed me to read. I read it and gained much, but I always felt something was lacking... Soon I realized the problem: it was a translated text. No matter how precise a translation is, it inevitably deviates in nuanced connotations and finer details. So I began learning Chinese. I studied for six years, until I could appreciate Tang poetry and Song ci myself, before reading it again."
He said he had spent six years diligently studying Chinese just to read one piece of Chen Buer's insights.
Thinking of his own English, the culprit behind his two failed college entrance exams... Han Qingyu felt a bit ashamed and said, "When I get back, I'll definitely study English hard."
Sean: "...Kill!"
The nineteen-man battle array swept forward like a tide.
Han Qingyu slashed with his left blade while his right blade left his hand in a throw.
"Here it comes. That thrown-blade slash I told you about, the move connected to that girl... Stay calm, counter according to plan, don't panic."
Sean cautioned from behind in French. Just as his words fell—
Schick! The war blade spinning out of the night brushed past one man's arm, leaving a cut.
Han Qingyu shifted his position, caught the blade with his right hand, and hurled the left blade out in the same breath.
Clang, clang, clang...
In less than thirty seconds, the Rusty Sister Dimple Slash raged like a tempest, delivering over twenty strikes in succession. But the opponents were clearly well-prepared. Their defensive array faced outward, each man ensuring that the only angle open to attack was their front, where their blades were poised to defend. Han Qingyu's initial offensive didn't kill a single person, merely wounding three.
All four turbines were fully engaged; Han Qingyu held nothing back in his source energy eruption... Yet compared to ordinary soldiers, every one of these men was a formidable combatant.
"If this keeps up, we can wear him down to death," murmurs rose from within the array.
"Yeah, here he comes again, watch out," someone warned.
"Wait, where is his other blade?!"
The men in the array suddenly noticed that Han Qingyu, moving at high speed, was currently empty-handed. This time, both of his war blades had left his grip at once.
Yet in the air, only one could be tracked by sight.
"Watch out for the other one!"
"Where is it?"
"In... the shadow!" In the chaos, a voice shrieked in absolute terror. Immediately after, schick! A dead iron war blade spiraling straight up from the ground sliced across his throat.
Kill!
The offensive didn't stop.
"In the shadow?" The men in the formation were thrown into disarray.
"Look at the ground!"
Schick! The second kill was completed.
Only now did the men in the array finally understand what "in the shadow" meant. Han Qingyu had unleashed both dead iron war blades in his Rusty Sister Dimple Slash at once—one whirled through the air in plain sight, the moonlight casting its shadow on the ground.
And the other blade was concealed within that shadow.
Terrifying source energy control, Sean thought, his brow furrowing.
Below, his men were descending into panic. Even though they now knew the other blade was hidden in the shadow, the angle of the moonlight kept shifting the shadow's position, making it nearly impossible to anticipate.
The war blades whirled. Han Qingyu remained silent and laser-focused as the ringing clashes of dead iron resounded continuously!
A fourth man fell...
Clang! Buzz...
Sean struck. Holding a standard-issue war blade, he accurately parried the blade darting rapidly out of the shadow midair, knocking it away.
Losing control, the war blade flew into the distance and splashed into a nearby stream.
At the same time, without pausing in the slightest after deflecting the blade, Sean charged forward in a straight line, unleashing a rapid flurry of slashes.
Han Qingyu recalled his other war blade just in time, but had no room to dodge. He could only retreat, parrying more than a dozen strikes head-on in succession.
Schick! A cut opened on the outside of his forearm, blood welling out, as he finally managed to dodge clear and regain his footing.
At the same time, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle...
A strange sound echoed across the wilderness.
In the stretch of the stream where Han Qingyu's deflected dead iron war blade had landed, the water was boiling.
Everyone present cast a sideways glance.
This was the heat generated by the collision of energy between Sean and Han Qingyu; dead iron did not store heat and dissipated it quickly, causing the stream water to boil outright.
Soon, the stream returned to calm.
Han Qingyu lowered his head and stomped his foot against the ground. A standard dead iron war blade lying on the earth bounced up into his hand.
"As it stands, you're still a bit weaker than me." Standing across from him, Sean offered a faint smile.
Han Qingyu looked up at him. "You must be forty, right? I'm twenty."
He couldn't win this fight. The wound on his arm wasn't severe, but Han Qingyu knew full well in his heart that he would almost certainly lose tonight.
The men in the enemy's battle array were no pushovers, and Sean was immensely strong.
He's probably even closer to super combat power than I am in my four-turbine state.
Even so, Han Qingyu's only chance remained goading Sean into a one-on-one duel, staking it all to kill him first. Once Sean was dead, the remaining problems would be easy to handle.
"Thirty-three. To you folks, Westerners look older." Sean delivered this line—which almost made Han Qingyu chuckle—with total seriousness. "And I only truly began training seven years ago. My path to Super is different from yours."
He tilted his head toward the stream that had just boiled. Clearly, what had happened was tied to the path he walked.
"Me: one year." Han Qingyu looked at him, the corner of his mouth curving upward. "Yet you're afraid."
Sean narrowed his eyes, studying Han Qingyu's expression.
"Provocation and taunts from Azure's prodigy, hoping for a one-on-one chance to cut me down first?"
"No. I'm unwilling to pay that high a price, nor do I care about fairness. Only victory and survival hold any ultimate meaning.
"Some say life and death are the fairest things of all... but I say they are the most unfair."
Sean paused, then switched to French. "Kill him."
The enemy battle array surged forward once more.
Blade in hand, Sean held back to maintain the threat, biding his time to strike.
Chapter 331