Pang Jinghe had no idea how formidable the blade in his hand truly was. Just as he did not know that Wen Jifei's bullets came in two varieties.
He had just withstood a bullet head-on—one that, in his understanding, was capable of slaying a super combat power.
In a single breath, he had snapped their weapons and slaughtered two men in succession.
At this moment, Old Pang's ego was completely swollen.
A man who had not dared to lift a finger against anyone for thirty years, who had drifted through society until he was reduced to mopping floors at an entertainment hall, had suddenly realized that his other side might well be an existence at the pinnacle of the mortal world...
He trembled with excitement.
*If I go back right now and slice Qu Zongyan to pieces with one strike, what will Han Qingyu and the others think of me?! What will those people from the hidden clans think of me?!* Pang Jinghe imagined.
"Shall we keep running, Comrade Pang?" Up on the slope, Lin Qiangqiang asked as the whistling rush of a massive crowd on the run and the relentless bursts of source energy echoed through the night.
In Lin Qiangqiang's mind, since Pang Jinghe was Major Qing's teammate, being exceedingly strong was entirely reasonable. Even the remaining six Azure soldiers did not find it terribly surprising.
*That's right. I just got into Azure and don't understand them yet. It isn't wise to show off too much of my edge for now.*
Pang Jinghe thought it over and decided to follow this nation's ancient philosophy: to refrain, for the moment, from fully revealing his formidable strength—which was very likely at the super level—lest he invite jealousy and harm his official prospects.
In that split second, his mind took a sudden leap. *Wait, could I become General Pang in the future? Field Marshal Pang?!*
"Comrade Pang?!" Lin Qiangqiang called out once more.
*Ahem, take it slow...* Pang Jinghe turned around, smoothly sheathing his blade, and said calmly, "Right. You run ahead. I'll cover the rear."
Seven pairs of eyes gazed at him, brimming with trust and gratitude.
Pang Jinghe relished the feeling. Meeting their gazes with a faint smile, he gestured with a hand. "Let's go. No need to rush too much."
By now, his self-perception as an expert had fully formed, and naturally, an expert's poise came along with it.
***
On the other side, the head-on pursuit was still underway.
In mid-sprint, Han Qingyu suddenly barked, "Left—"
Wu Xu began to think...
"Don't! Wu Xu!" Wen Jifei let out a swift, terrified screech. "Straight! Just go straight!"
"Left, my ass, Dragonfly Han! Are you trying to get me killed?!"
Qingzi had actually given Wu Xu left-right directions! Wen Jifei could already picture himself being torn in half right from the crotch, and he shrieked even as he kept firing.
"There's a sapling straight ahead," Han Qingyu said.
*A sapling?* Wen Jifei thought.
"Is it big?"
"About as thick as a wrist."
"Then..." *That's still better than making Wu Xu process left from right to make a turn!* Wen Jifei focused his source energy surge toward his crotch... and with tragic, solemn righteousness, he declared, "Ram through it!"
"..."
*Snap!* The sapling broke.
The enemy gave chase without relent. Qu Zongyan had not given up, pursuing all the way at the head of more than a thousand men. Even Qu Zongxing, whose life source energy was draining away at a frantic pace, had chased out after them. Having finally accepted that death was inevitable, he wanted vengeance before his final breath.
Blessed by eighteen generations of Qu clan ancestors, their ancestral graves had billowed green smoke into an atomic mushroom cloud, granting them a pair of supers under one roof—an unmatched wonder in the world—and they had been preparing to emerge from the mountains to contend for supremacy over the land.
Yet before they had even set foot out the front door, one had bitten the dust.
Hatred and fury drove them to pursue to the death.
"Zhu Jiaming." Wu Xu looked ahead. There, Zhu Jiaming was coming straight toward them.
"Yeah. Let go," Han Qingyu said.
Wu Xu released Wen Jifei's ankle.
Then, Han Qingyu slung Wen Jifei upward, sending him sailing high into the air toward the front.
At the same time, Han Qingyu drew his blade and charged toward Zhu Jiaming with a *shing*!
He intended to cut Zhu Jiaming down first, then catch Wen Jifei.
"I gave them back! I gave the bones back!" Seeing Han Qingyu draw his blade and charge at him, Zhu Jiaming threw his hands up in a hurry and yelled, "Friendly! I've repented and seen the light!"
"Rusty Sister! Rusty Sister, help me out and say something!" Zhu Jiaming looked back.
"He did give them back," Rusty Sister said, "but..."
Rusty Sister wanted to say that cutting him down was fine too; this man harbored treacherous motives, and keeping him around was far too dangerous.
"Fine." Ahead, Han Qingyu had already sheathed his blade and said, "Then run, quick. We run together."
With two supers and more than a thousand men trailing behind, Han Qingyu and Wu Xu never broke their stride, sweeping past the two from left and right.
They moved to catch Wen Jifei as he fell from the sky.
"Switch to Rusty Sister! Wu Xu, just keep your eyes on the Little Prince! Don't touch me! Switch to Rusty Sister!" Wen Jifei bellowed commands while tumbling through the air.
As he came down, Han Qingyu and Shen Yixiu—who had spun around and charged over—each grabbed one of his ankles.
Wen Jifei breathed a sigh of relief.
Han Qingyu: "Left."
Turning, they dashed toward a mountain bend.
"Aren't we running toward the helicopter?" Having been praised for intercepting Zhu Jiaming, Rusty Sister asked with some cheer.
"We can't go straight there. If we head right over, Qingbai won't even have time to start the engine."
Han Qingyu spoke without slowing his pace.
Their current escape route formed roughly a sixty-degree angle with the rendezvous point where He Tangtang and Yang Qingbai were waiting. He intended to lead the Qu clan fighters further away, find a ditch to hunker down in, and then loop back.
Behind them, Wu Xu paused to wait a moment for Zhu Jiaming, and the two hurried to catch up.
Just like that, they ran for over half an hour. Wen Jifei had stopped firing; they had opened up a little distance and hoped to shake off the pursuit.
Even so, he was still being hauled along by his ankles.
The speed of five people running together was not Han Qingyu's speed, but rather the shortest plank of the wooden barrel—Zhu Jiaming's speed. Of course, when the Little Prince truly sprinted for his life, he was not slow either.
It was simply that they could not shake off Qu Zongyan like this.
"Why are we still dragging him along, Han Qingyu?" While running, Rusty Sister glanced back at Zhu Jiaming and asked.
Zhu Jiaming heard her. Feigning nonchalance, he pricked up his ears to listen.
"Old ties are still there," Han Qingyu said softly, pitching his voice just enough for Zhu Jiaming to catch it.
"Besides, he's actually pretty fun to have around, isn't he?" Wen Jifei chimed in, lying prone in midair.
Yet the true thought in both of their hearts was: *Twenty to thirty years! Who in the world would believe Zhu Jiaming didn't stash away one or two Bones of Eternal Life for himself?!*
As for Zhu Jiaming, he heard every word. He did not entirely believe them, but he would naturally stick to Han Qingyu even if it killed him; Han the Piggy Bank had six Bones of Eternal Life on him right now.
***
The mountain ridges rolled on, peaks and valleys interlacing. Moonlight shimmered across the water's surface.
Zhu Jiaming pointed into the distance. "There's a lake over there."
It was an opportunity to hide and shake off their pursuers.
Rusty Sister: "Should we jump in?!"
With their strength, as long as their source energy was not exhausted, they could remain hidden underwater for a very long time. Especially Rusty Sister, who could easily stay down there for two or three years without issue.
"No." Han Qingyu kicked a large boulder.
The rock plunged into the water. *Splash, plop, plop, plop...*
Ripples spread outward across the surface.
The five vaulted forward over a stretch of ground to avoid leaving footprints, rapidly scaling a hillside along the lake's flank.
"Are we circling back from here?"
"No rush." Han Qingyu came to a stop and looked toward the shadow near the crest of the slope, where a stone pit opened straight down into the flat ground. "Let's take a gamble. We jump down."
He was betting on a blind spot in the enemy's logic, because in this situation, ordinary people would make only one of two assumptions: either they were in the lake, or they were still running.
"Jump down." Han Qingyu turned and glanced at Zhu Jiaming.
"...Alright." Zhu Jiaming jumped down first.
Immediately after, Han Qingyu and the other three dropped down in sequence.
The stone pit was not wide, making it rather cramped with five people inside. Zhu Jiaming stood in the center, a longsword pressed against his back, a greatsword resting on his neck, and the muzzle of a sniper rifle jammed under his chin.
"Is this... really necessary?" The Little Prince smiled awkwardly.
"Shh."
The booming roar of source energy erupting drifted through the night.
They were coming, and they were very close.
In truth, their current situation was far from optimistic. As long as Qu Zongxing recognized that he was doomed to die, a super fighting desperately on the brink of death, combined with Qu Zongyan and those thousand-plus men, meant that once a battle broke out, casualties among the five of them would be unavoidable.
Below, footsteps came to a halt by the lakeshore.
First one or two, then a dozen, and then a great swarm.
A fighter from the hidden clans who had strayed off course ran along the hillside straight to the opening of the stone pit. He peered down, dumbfounded.
Han Qingyu leaped up soundlessly and dragged him down...
The hillside remained silent.
Down below the slope:
"Could they be at the bottom of the lake?!" Luo Tianlong asked, standing some distance from the water's edge.
Qu Zongyan nodded.
The current situation put him in a difficult spot. It was indeed possible that the enemy was hiding at the bottom of the lake; without investigating, they could neither press forward nor remain where they were. Yet if he dove straight down, blades and spears might well be waiting for him below.
After a moment's thought, Qu Zongyan raised a hand and drew a blade from the back of a war slave beside him. With a booming eruption of source energy, he spun around and hurled the combat knife violently into the lake.
*Boom!* A spray of water shot high into the air.
The combat knife met no resistance whatsoever, plunging straight to the lakebed.
This way, if any parry occurred, Qu Zongyan would know instantly whether anyone was down there.
Luo Tianlong understood. He raised a hand and bellowed, "Bombard it for me!"
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*...
Water surged skyward.
It felt like a torrential downpour, literally bucket after bucket pouring down.
Inside the upward-facing stone pit, Wen Jifei tilted his head back to wipe the water from his face, then looked down at the water level already reaching his neck. In a hushed voice, he said, "It's almost full."
"Yeah," Han Qingyu nodded.
"Nobody pee in the pool, understood?" Wen Jifei warned.
"Mmh!" The Little Prince grunted his agreement with his mouth clamped shut; because he was rather short, opening his mouth at this point meant water pouring straight in.
He would have been fine keeping quiet, but the moment he made a sound, Wen Jifei turned to look at him. "Aiya, I suddenly feel the urge to pee."
Zhu Jiaming: "..."
*Smack!*
Suddenly, a bighead carp weighing at least five or six jin dropped from the sky, slamming right onto Zhu Jiaming's head before sliding down.
Half-dead, belly-up, it was still thrashing.
Right beside Zhu Jiaming's neck, its tail whipped back and forth, *smack, smack*, slapping him in the face...
*Think I'm going to let myself get bullied by a fish?* The Little Prince reached out, preparing to kill it.
"Don't kill it. If you kill it and soak it in water, it won't be fresh anymore."
"We're on the run here!"
"Take it along in a bit; we'll make a pot of soup," Wen Jifei said.
*Smack!* Another one dropped.
"This one's for grilling."
By the time the roaring along the lakeshore finally ceased, there were already eight fish inside the stone pit.
At the same time, the water rose over the heads of Wu Xu and Han Qingyu.
Submerged beneath the surface, the four stared at each other: *If anyone pees, kill him on the spot.*
The iron armor shrank meekly to the side, looking small, weak, and innocent.
Chapter 393