The path ahead had opened.
Beginning with White Eraser, the crowd parted to both sides of the road like a receding wave. Then, some walked deliberately slowly, while others simply came to a brazen halt, packing the edges of the road to watch what would happen next.
The blue starlight column sword that had become Han Qingyu's hallmark remained wrapped in dark-green tarp across his back.
At this moment, the only weapon in his hand was the dead iron straight sword whose edge had previously been ground away.
"Look at that. The blade he was holding all along was edgeless."
"...Yeah."
Along both sides of the road, whispered chatter in various tongues and gestures between those who shared no common language began to stir... The scene grew steadily more clamorous.
Now that they had cleared the path, no matter what followed, they intended to see this fight through to the end.
They were warriors—elite warriors. And this was a battle of The King.
When it came to Han Qingyu's combat style, the Rusty Sister Dimple Slash was no longer a secret; many had witnessed it on the battlefield.
As for the blue starlight column sword, however, the vast majority present had only heard that he had used it to blast through a blue-sheened Great Spike swarm at the Xilang Peak circular position and shatter Ye Jian's twin sabers at the Huaxia All-Army Conference—none of them had witnessed it with their own eyes.
Before them.
Han Qingyu... a straight line extending along the gravel and trampled grass... straight to the makeshift airfield.
In that straight direction, the line of sight opened wide.
The morning glow hung high in the distant sky, radiant beams of light bursting through the clouds in splendid brilliance.
Over a thousand meters away, the rotor blades atop a helicopter were spinning from slow to fast. Grass flattened against the ground as swirling sand was whipped up. Thump, thump, thump, thump... The roar of the rotors grew louder.
"Thank you," Han Qingyu said.
At that same moment, aboard the helicopter in the distance, Charles Alphonse grabbed his grandfather Denis Alphonse's arm, his eyes filled with sheer terror as he looked over—past the crowd parting to either side, through the open, unobstructed corridor, straight at Han Qingyu standing there.
Han Qingyu was looking back at him, or rather, at all of them.
"They... they moved aside!" The moment their gazes locked, Charles shrieked hysterically, "Grandfather! Father, look, they cleared the way! He's coming..."
*Whoosh!* Beneath the crimson morning light, a majestic surge of source energy resonated across the entire airfield.
Sand and dirt swept up before Han Qingyu as the ten Azure Medals on the ground rolled forward once again.
"He's above top tier," someone nearby murmured.
"Yeah. In barely more than a year. No wonder rumors said the Alphonse family wanted him dead because of that matter... Now it's done. A blood feud."
Indeed. A blood feud.
The Alphonse family had plotted and struck first.
And Major The Qing's retaliation had come swiftly.
*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!*
Han Qingyu shot forward on the spot. Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, and Wen Jifei activated their devices right behind him.
Four figures swept forward with weapons in hand like four streaks of light, charging straight for the airfield.
At the cliff's edge, the helicopter's tail lifted slightly.
Inside the cabin, Charles was still hysterical, muttering timidly, eyes wide with fright.
"Faster! Hurry up! Take off!" Eric urged the family deathsworn pilot in the cockpit again and again.
At the cabin door, Denis Alphonse hunched slightly as he stood, thrusting an arm out as his source energy surged, roaring at the top of his lungs, "Stop him! Quick, stop him!"
A family clinging to life by plundering the life source energy of others had at this moment thoroughly exposed the cowardice in their nature.
The flustered, panicked spectacle of three generations of this founding Asterism family struck many onlookers as baffling and absurd.
In their minds, no matter how powerful Han Qingyu was, a family boasting such illustrious renown should never have behaved this way.
Most of the Nepalese soldiers present unconsciously hung their heads. In truth, most of them had no personal connection to the Alphonse family, let alone any affection for them.
To them, it was merely an aloof, independent power looming over their territory.
If they had felt anything before, it was perhaps a touch of reverence and pride. Now that was gone, and they found themselves missing General Upadhyaya all the more.
Yet the instant Denis Alphonse's shout died away—
Right from where they stood, right beside them—*whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...* a rapid succession of source energy detonations erupted.
Along the edges of the road, within two or three meters laterally, more than a dozen men wearing Nepal Front combat uniforms suddenly burst from the flanks, thrusting blades straight at the advancing four.
At the same time, dozens more converged from both sides of the airfield, charging forward to intercept them head-on.
For a moment, source energy churned, and a forest of blades sheared through the wind.
"This isn't right! They're trying to kill them!"
Beside the road, Cao Min spoke urgently to Captain Lu Chengzhong.
If these people were classified as Azure elite squad members, the orders they had received from command were explicitly to restrain.
Yet the men before them were clearly staging an assassination, bent on taking the lives of Han Qingyu and his companions.
Were they Azure soldiers loyal to the Alphonse family?
The answer was obviously no.
The Nepalese soldiers still in a daze grasped this best of all. After a brief look, they quickly recognized a common thread: almost all of these men had possessed source energy martial abilities before even joining Azure.
Thus, in all likelihood, they belonged to the Alphonse family in the first place, planted within the front beforehand.
The clattering crash of dead iron rang out across the field.
The ambush was sprung at far too close a range. Flanked on both sides in an instant, Han Qingyu and the others were forced to defend themselves, their forward momentum temporarily stalling.
Shen Yixiu's iron armor clanged and rattled as she weathered several thrusts from the flanks, slamming directly into the crowd of enemies.
"What do we do?! Should we go help?!"
Even as Cao Min asked, the members of Mexico's Chichen Itza Squad nearby had already drawn their blades as one.
In contrast, White Eraser, who had been the first to give up blocking the way, stood motionless, appearing entirely unmoved.
"Help how?!" It had all unfolded so abruptly that Lu Chengzhong had no time to think; in haste, his right hand gripped his hilt as he asked.
"Pretend we're attacking Qingzi!"
An ardent hunger to join the fray flashed through Cao Min's eyes, and a sly, smug grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
With that, he drew his sword with a metallic ring, poised to charge.
A hand grabbed him from behind. "Thanks, but don't! No need." A voice sounded by his side.
Cao Min glanced over his shoulder.
Wen Jifei stood there.
As the weakest of the four, unable to move his right arm and barely capable of firing a gun, Wen Jifei had done just as he always did—the moment the situation shifted, he had immediately pulled back.
"But..." Cao Min gestured toward the skirmish ahead, hesitating. Wen Jifei had said "don't" before saying "no need."
The urgency to stop him was unmistakable.
Moments later, Cao Min understood why.
At that moment, from the crowd rushing head-on from the airfield, someone yelled loudly at Han Qingyu in halting Chinese as he charged:
"Han Qingyu! You dare slaughter your Azure comrades?!"
That was why Wen Jifei had told Cao Min "don't." The enemies on the field had set up their identities in advance. If Han Qingyu killed them—especially in large numbers—the matter would escalate far beyond a personal grudge between Han Qingyu and the Alphonse family, creating immense trouble.
And if squads like Long Blade and Chichen Itza got dragged in, the trouble would fall directly on them as well, escalating things even further.
The instant he worked it out, Cao Min looked back up at Wen Jifei with mixed emotions, feeling both the bitter frustration and helplessness weighing on them. With a conflicted gaze, he asked, "Then... will Qingzi kill them?"
"Yeah."
It was Han Qingyu's voice.
Yet Cao Min knew Han Qingyu wasn't answering him.
Rather, when the enemy had shouted that accusation in front of so many people as coercion—demanding, "Han Qingyu! You dare slaughter your Azure comrades?!"—
Han Qingyu had given his answer: "Yeah."
The moment the word fell—
*Slash!*
Across a distance of at least three hundred meters, a dead iron straight sword spun diagonally through the air, shearing straight through the screaming man's throat.
The man collapsed abruptly mid-stride.
Only then did the crowd realize Han Qingyu had drawn a second sword.
That kill brought the dozens rushing from the front to a momentary pause.
*Whoosh!* The black Binggu spear had already arrived, coiling like a dragon as it thrust into the crowd.
Holding the spear in both hands, Wu Xu swept it violently across, clearing a wide swath, and with a sharp clang, tapped the butt of the spear against the spinning sword, sending it arcing back.
Han Qingyu sprinted forward and caught the sword.
Without stalling in the slightest, gripping a dead iron straight sword in reverse in each hand, he leaned forward as his speed exploded once more, dragging the blades behind him as he plowed straight into the host of enemies.
Behind him, Shen Yixiu turned her iron armor to intercept foes arriving from the rear.
Another three hundred meters; the gap narrowed once more.
Yet at least several hundred meters away at the airfield, the helicopter had already lifted off the ground, climbing ten meters, twenty meters...
They were going to escape.
"Hold him off! Stop him!"
Denis stood at the cabin door, continuing to yell at the top of his lungs while staring down toward the melee below. Down there, though the three were terrifyingly powerful, dozens of deathsworn were nonetheless pinning them down in the short term, trading their very lives for time.
Beneath Denis's feet, the helicopter continued to climb: thirty meters, forty meters... a hundred meters. The figures on the ground were gradually receding into the distance.
*Bang!* A gunshot suddenly cracked.
Wen Jifei fired single-handedly from behind the crowd with obvious difficulty.
At the cabin door, Denis drew his blade.
*Clang!*
His war blade deflected the bullet with pinpoint precision.
A relaxed smile spread across Denis's face, and he turned to smile at Eric and Charles.
The horizontal distance, plus the helicopter's altitude above the ground... they had escaped to safety.
The dread deep in his heart dissolved completely in this moment, and Denis suddenly remembered words he had spoken earlier: *What a splendid sight that agony will be. If only I could wave goodbye to him in person.*
He sheathed his war blade, held the cabin door with his right hand, and extended his left hand outward.
Smiling, Denis waved to Han Qingyu on the ground.
Everyone on the ground looked up and saw this.
"Major The Qing won't make it in time." At that moment, frontline commanders felt a surge of relief that the situation had not devolved into the worst possible outcome.
Yet far more people thought to themselves: *That is the Alphonse family... Just look at how they behaved. Everything from before until now makes me feel nothing but disgust.*
Stefania represented another group. Turning to her teammate, the Venezuelan girl said with pained empathy in her eyes, "He must feel so stifled right now. After fighting his way here through all of this, only to..."
*Shink!*
In truth, there was no sound.
No one could hear the sound of a blade slicing through the air over two hundred meters above.
Yet they could see it.
The arm Denis Alphonse had reached out to wave suddenly severed.
The severed limb plummeted downward.
And the blade that had cleaved through his arm was still there before the cabin door, spinning upward.
No one had imagined that Han Qingyu's Rusty Sister Dimple Slash could reach such a terrifying strike distance, or that his control over its arc could reach such a horrifying level.
The dead iron straight sword had looped up from beneath the helicopter...
When had it been thrown?!
At the exact moment Wen Jifei fired his shot.
*Whoa!* After a two-second stunned silence, an uproar of gasps and cries erupted around the entire makeshift airfield.
Before their eyes,
the dead iron blade reached the apex of its ascent and began to fall.
A spray of blood rained down through the air.
Denis let out an agonized shriek that echoed clearly across the entire airfield.
As if in answer to that smiling wave just moments before, Han Qingyu stood amid the melee, looked up, and smiled.
His smile was radiant.
Chapter 351