There were schools in the City of Iniquity too, and Lubi Azha had attended one before turning fourteen. The teacher at school had told them that living well in the City of Iniquity was simple; one needed to accomplish only two things: stay alive, and become strong.
The teacher called this a kind of fairness.
Uncle Shiliang, however, said the teacher was talking out of his ass.
Because those two conditions were, in themselves, the greatest unfairness of all.
First, the probability of dying was completely different between the bottom and the top here, starting from birth. Second, the foundation for becoming strong—the disparity in resources, which simply meant the massive gap in source energy blocks—persisted from birth just the same.
"If we win this time, the unfairness you've known since birth will be wiped away. That's why I'm not taking you and running."
Uncle Shiliang had said those words to Lubi Azha in the battle formation an hour ago.
"But someone like Boss He Guang—if he went to throw in his lot with a major faction, they'd definitely take him, right? Why doesn't he go?" Azha had asked at the time.
Uncle Shiliang had replied that he didn't know; Leader He Guang had never mentioned it. Then he added, "There's always a reason. Maybe some people can't swallow their pride, maybe some have high ambitions, or maybe it's something they just don't care to talk about."
Lubi Azha had no grand ambitions. Power and status—he didn't understand such things and never gave them any thought. But he wanted to grow stronger, because only the strong could survive here... Azha wanted to live. He was only seventeen.
In order to live, he was now wading through a thicket of blades, moving with the battle formation, following Uncle Shiliang, hacking forward slash after slash, fighting for his life.
The core principle of formation fighting was position. Maintaining position amidst a chaotic melee meant taking risks. No one knew when a blade might strike them; Lubi Azha didn't know, and neither did Uncle Shiliang.
"As for me, my name is Xu Shiliang. I came from Azure's Huaxia Front, the Sole Witness Legion, Fourth Army. Your dad and I were squadmates."
In the thick of battle, Uncle Shiliang blurted this out unexpectedly.
It was the first time he had ever spoken of it, and he stopped right there. Uncle Shiliang did not go on to explain why they had left Azure. Lubi Azha didn't ask either; he wouldn't ask now, nor would he pry afterward. He merely gave a heavy "Mm" to show he had heard.
Then Azha felt a surge of excitement.
*The Sole Witness Legion! Dad was once... was one of Legion Commander Chen Buer's soldiers! That's incredible.*
*Does that mean I'm kind of connected to the Sole Witness Legion too?*
*Hey! We're fighting right over the legion commander's blade scars!*
With those thoughts coursing through his mind, Lubi Azha swung his blade forward, hacking and slashing...
Perhaps ten minutes passed.
Or maybe a little longer, until the enemy before him gradually thinned out and disappeared.
"Halt! Stop... don't pursue! Fall back!" Leader Old Hugh's voice drifted back from up front. "They fell back... Brothers, they chickened out!"
"Fuck yeah! We hacked them right back! Hahahaha!"
Lubi Azha came to a stop along with the battle formation.
Uncle Shiliang glanced at him and asked, "You all right?"
Azha looked down over his body and said, "I'm fine." Then he looked at Uncle Shiliang. "Uncle, you're hurt?"
"Just a scratch." Uncle Shiliang grinned, showing the wound.
Not bad—it really wasn't serious.
Lubi Azha exhaled in relief. He stood on his tiptoes to peer ahead. From his position, he couldn't see Leader Old Hugh, but from the sound of that voice, he could tell how thrilled Old Hugh was right now.
Everyone around him was ecstatic. Some were cheering and jumping with joy; others stood silent, looking down at the blades in their hands as if finding it impossible to believe.
"Wait, what about behind us?!"
The noise of combat seemed to have died down. Lubi Azha glanced back. The enemies who had surged out of the side alleys to the rear had been driven back just the same. At this moment, everyone standing along the main thoroughfare of the Third District belonged to the Wild Band Alliance.
So they really had repelled the first wave of the major factions' assault—meeting them head-on and beating them back head-on...
It felt almost unbelievable, but it had genuinely happened. Lubi Azha gazed around in a daze, shaking his head.
"Don't lose your heads! Maintain formation!" Leader Old Hugh shouted again. "They'll be back! They could come at any moment! Stay alert, fan out your formations... groups of five, watch each other's backs, take turns swapping out your source energy blocks!"
They truly had won the clash, but this was only the first wave. While fighting to keep himself calm and organizing the spread of the formations and the replacement of source energy blocks, Old Hugh glanced up toward the high ground on both sides.
Those rooftops rose above the streetlamps, pitch-black, without even a shadow to be seen.
Yet from the moment this battle began until the major factions' forces retreated in disarray, not a single enemy expert had raided the battle formations.
That made no sense. It was nighttime, and aside from the alleys flanking them, there were countless rooftops. Individual incursions by top experts should have been inevitable.
This irregularity lent credence to the suspicion brewing in Old Hugh's mind.
"Hey, I—let me tell you something," Gu Zhazha, who had just led the squad blocking the rear alley mouth, hurried over and whispered beside Old Hugh. "Just now, up there on the roof to the side, a dark figure tried to dive down. Somebody hacked him right back mid-air... sent him flying two or three hundred meters, maybe."
"Ah." Old Hugh let out a sound, struck momentarily speechless by his surging excitement.
"You don't believe me? That building over there in the distance, a hole got smashed right through the wall, I swear... If you don't believe me, come look. You can catch an angle from where I was." Gu Zhazha's eyes were earnest and stirred up.
"No need to look, I know." Old Hugh nodded again, his eyes shining bright. "Shh! Get back and organize the defense. They'll be back. They'll be flying into a rage, and they'll come again soon... This time they might come from every direction. We need to hurry and organize our formations to hold our positions."
Gu Zhazha ran all the way back.
Old Hugh took a deep breath and continued organizing the positions. Perhaps this was Boss Dao's arrangement, or perhaps it was the expert's own initiative; Old Hugh didn't point it out. All that mattered was knowing the expert was truly there.
***
*Click.* The metal case snapped shut. Azha tightened his grip on his blade.
They were the He Guang Gang's Second Formation. Now separated from their boss as well as the First and Third Formations, they held a formation at a street corner.
Every corner and alleyway along the entire street was guarded by battle formations.
The gang bosses said the major factions had huge tempers and couldn't stomach humiliation; they would return very soon.
No one spoke.
*Whoosh! Whoosh!*
Along the entire street, not a single person made a sound. Only heavy breathing stirred the air. In that breathing, one could even sense an undercurrent of excitement beneath the tension—the sound of conviction taking root.
*We might really win,* Azha thought.
All of a sudden: "They're here!"
"They're coming!"
"..."
Shouts in various languages erupted in disarray from at least a dozen different spots.
Footsteps swarmed around them, crowding the ears... *Boom!* Before Azha could even make out the command, their formation was shattered. Enemies charging out of the dark breached the lines directly.
Fierce sounds of combat rang out.
Under the sudden shock of tremendous chaos, he parried, retaliated, dodged, and sought gaps to break through the enemy throng almost entirely on instinct...
*Wait, this isn't right.* A fleeting backward glance showed him that the Second Formation was reforming in the distance, while he was already more than two hundred meters away from them.
Between those two hundred meters was a crisscrossing swarm of enemies. The entire street was now locked in a chaotic brawl.
"Uncle Shiliang, I'm over here... No, wait, Uncle Shiliang, please don't see me." The mental turn occurred in a split second.
In a situation like this, rescuing an individual separated from the formation was virtually impossible, but if Uncle Shiliang saw him, he would definitely come.
So after hesitating for barely half a second, Azha turned and plunged the opposite way into an alleyway from which the enemy had surged.
Run. Run. He heard rapid footsteps and the roar of source energy right behind him. They were chasing him—so many of them, maybe ten, maybe more.
There were probably enemies ahead as well, but there was no time to care. Lubi Azha sprinted for dear life, yet the footsteps drew ever closer.
*Looks like I'm going to die. I'm too weak, Uncle Shiliang. Ah, I haven't even had the chance to get strong yet... I really wanted to visit your and Dad's homeland.*
*Pant! Pant!* Stepping sideways with his right foot and wheeling around on his left, Lubi Azha turned and raised his blade.
He couldn't run anymore...
*Clang!*
A suit of iron armor dropped down, appearing right before him with its back turned toward him.
It had dropped from the rooftop.
"You... I..." Azha wanted to explain that he wasn't deserting. He recognized this suit of iron armor; when they were deploying earlier, he had caught a distant glimpse of it.
So this was a full-armor warrior on his own side.
"Running around blind without even knowing where you're going," the suit of armor said, lifting an enemy who had charged right up to them.
It was a girl's voice, sounding roughly around his own age. And she hoisted an enemy holding a blade right into the air.
Chapter 467