Yet another morning arrived. Clad in monk's robes, the old monk sat beside the roadside entrance, chopping firewood with a handsome little hatchet.
Coming out the door, Han Youshan felt deeply ashamed at the sight. He meant to say that heavy chores like this ought to be done by himself, but as he drew closer, he saw that the master was chopping with utter ease—countless times more effortless than he ever could.
The old man barely seemed to exert any force at all; his arm rose, the axe fell, and the firewood split cleanly apart, each piece neat and uniform to perfection.
Across the ocean, over a dozen hours behind in time zones, it was deep night.
A ten-thousand-ton cargo ship tossed and pitched in a colossal storm. Black, violent waves rose two to three stories high, crashing against the hull again and again.
"Get back! Don't stand on the deck! Leave the cargo alone, everyone get back inside the cabins!" Running through the gale and rain, the captain shouted at the top of his lungs, herding the crew back into the cabins.
"Hand me the helm, you lot go down too... Go on down! Don't worry, it'll be fine."
Apart from the captain and two or three people beside him, even the crew in the wheelhouse were chased below.
It was a ferocious storm. Naturally, a ten-thousand-ton freighter would not capsize easily, though crew injuries or cargo damage were certainly possible. But since the crew earned their living at sea, none of them had actually planned on backing down.
"What is the captain doing?!"
"Yeah, even if he means well, tsk, things might really go wrong like this!"
"Exactly! With just a handful of them up there, can they really handle it...?"
Huddled in the cabins, the crew members could clearly feel the freighter heeling and rolling in the ocean. Most of them were seasoned sailors, intimately familiar with such surging currents—this was a massive tempest.
And so it swayed and tossed... amid their growing worry.
"Hey, did anyone notice something off?" a young deckhand suddenly asked.
The huddled sailors all turned their heads. "What?!"
"The waves haven't crashed down. I mean, the waves aren't crashing down!" the young deckhand yelled forcefully.
Startled by the realization, everyone thought back and found it was indeed true.
All this time, they had clearly felt the fierce, torrential surging of the currents, yet the next stage—the heavy impact of monstrous waves slamming into the hull, the shudder of the ship being struck—never came.
This was utterly bizarre...
"Why's that?!"
"No clue."
"Go up and take a look?"
"Don't, absolutely not! Stop talking nonsense."
Remembering those unusual guests and the sound of heavy iron footsteps he had overheard by chance a few days ago, an older sailor sternly cut them off.
Inwardly, he could only think in silence: *This world really isn't as simple as it seems.*
At the same time, on the deck, the final towering swell split apart midway as it lunged toward the hull. A tremendous counter-impact halted it in midair, parting the surge to both sides before crashing back into the sea.
Almost an entire night had passed, and the freighter had finally steamed out of the storm zone.
Just in time, dawn began to break dimly on the horizon.
A sensation of open clarity swept through his chest, letting him breathe freely at last. Han Qingyu stood at the bow and looked around, shut off his device, and sheathed his combat blade back into its wooden box.
Beside him, Wu Xu stowed away the Binggu Spear, his iron armor washed gleaming bright by seawater.
"How does the recovery feel?!" Wen Jifei stepped forward and asked.
"Not good. Still haven't fully recovered." To put it in northern slang, his whole body felt out of sorts. Han Qingyu turned his head and asked, "Wu Xu, what about you?"
Wu Xu looked at him and shook his head.
Wen Jifei furrowed his brows. "Then what should we do? The captain says we'll arrive tomorrow evening. How about we drift at sea for a few more days?"
"How many days would be enough?!" He turned toward Zhe Qiuhong nearby.
Zhe Qiuhong glanced at him. "I don't know."
"You don't know? Didn't you say you estimated they'd be recovered by the end of the voyage?"
"Yes, which is why I said it was only an estimate. I've never encountered a situation like theirs before, nor do I understand their kind of constitution very well," Zhe Qiuhong answered flatly.
Wen Jifei: "..."
Only after confirming that their discussion was over did the captain emerge from the wheelhouse.
The power these people had displayed was terrifying. He desperately wanted to ask, yet dared not—and knew he must not. He said, "Now we..."
"Just keep heading forward. Let us know when we arrive, and we'll disembark first. Thank you, Captain Ling."
With that, Han Qingyu turned and glanced back at the storm zone, where the swells still raged violently.
...
The cook received word that he could start preparing breakfast. When the crew returned to the deck to clean up, they happened to catch sight of Han Qingyu and Wu Xu walking at the rear. Soaked to the skin and carrying wooden cases, the two were heading back to their cabin.
"Could those waves... have been..."
"Shh! Stop guessing! Don't look, stop looking!" The older sailor yanked his younger crewmate roughly, then spread his arms to usher the rest of the crew, herding them all away.
In the cabin, Han Qingyu changed his clothes. The intense fatigue from mock-battling the ocean waves made him deeply uncomfortable. *Am I really this weak right now?* Telling the others not to wake him for breakfast, Han Qingyu lay down to go back to sleep.
There was no other choice but sleep, and then: *Molt already... please, just molt quickly...*
The freighter still rolled gently having left the storm zone behind.
Yet Han Qingyu fell asleep quickly and deeply. By the time he woke, it would probably be about time to disembark.
This voyage had already lasted over twenty days.
In fact, over these twenty-odd days, many things had happened in the world.
One evening, on a night street in the small town where the Xiongzhanli Azure Officer Academy was located, Milla caught sight of Marshal Hua—or what might have been Marshal Hua; she had only ever seen him once from a distance before.
He appeared to be injured. But when she moved toward him, the figure vanished into the crowd.
The situation in Xiongzhanli was terrible. One of the major factions in the corresponding front was preparing to break away from Azure, which had become an open secret.
Liu Yiwu threw a furious tantrum at the Alliance Council, cursing everyone out. Given that he had once cursed a Red Shoulder to death atop Xilang Peak, no one dared talk back.
Ashleia, Ian, and a cohort of journalists waited at the doors, hoping to interview this Huaxia Front general, but Commander Liu stalked out in a fury and left directly.
Alphonse had recently had very bitter disputes with the Azure Council, declaring that if the unilateral investigation continued, he would consider withdrawing from Azure.
Two months ago, Azure Scientific Research Headquarters had finished dismantling the Great Spike mothership from Xilang Peak. Now, they had built the first source-energy-powered engine—though for now, it was merely an experimental prototype that could not yet be installed in an actual craft.
Azure was beginning to reverse-engineer spacecraft, despite a severe shortage of dead iron.
A few days later, the word "Reserve" was dropped from the Reserve Aerial Combat Forces of each front.
A swarm of over three hundred Great Spikes landed in Antarctica due to yet another malfunction of the Rejecters' super defense station. Some died there; others forged glorious records.
En route, the fleet sent to reinforce the eradication effort was ambushed by a force suspected to be Snow Lotus.
...
While all this took place, Han Qingyu slept peacefully amid the rocking of the ocean swells.
The world seemed to be drifting away from him. No matter how many people remembered and missed his name, the glorious legends of the past year truly seemed to belong to the past.
There were also those who tried to imagine and hope that Major The Qing would, as he always had before, suddenly appear amidst the bloody battles or upon the glaciers of Antarctica. But he did not. It was as if he had vanished forever.
This day was late February 1992.
The City of Iniquity had no city walls.
Wind from the wasteland always blew into it, sending torn scraps of paper whirling and tumbling along pitch-black streets.
Few pedestrians walked the streets in the predawn hours. The nights of this city of exiles were forever accompanied by silent slaughter.
Even so, the distant bars were still raucous.
A drunken crowd of men and women stumbled past, casually smashing a wine bottle on the ground.
Ao Yong's somewhat thin silhouette stood in the shadows. Waiting until they had drifted far off, he silently walked over to sweep up the broken glass and emptied his dustpan into the garbage cart. Turning toward another figure in the distance, he called out, "Brother Daofeng, I think it's time we get going."
Qian Daofeng was actually only two years older than Ao Yong, twenty-one... Raising his wrist, he checked the Huaxia steel-band watch on his arm. He turned back and said, "All right."
Carrying his dustpan and broom, Qian Daofeng jogged a few paces, dumped his trash into the cart, and said, "Let's get in the truck then. Quick."
Entrusted by someone, the two of them were heading outside the city tonight to pick up a few people—a few Huaxians they didn't know, likely refugees on the run.
This wasn't their first time; it was perhaps their tenth or twentieth.
Such things were commonplace in the City of Iniquity, much like newcomers leaving their hometowns to work elsewhere would always seek out fellow townsfolk to guide them, even if those fellow townsfolk weren't doing particularly well in the city themselves.
Chapter 424