Counting from when the car had slowed, nearly an hour had passed; counting from when it finally parked, it was only about twenty minutes. They hadn't walked very far when the ambush struck without warning at the very climax of the New Year's Eve fireworks.
Fireworks illuminated the sea.
Blades burst from the earth.
The major faction long lurking in the shadows had finally made its move.
No one knew how they had arranged this or which iteration of their ambush plans this was, but in the end, Han Qingyu and his six companions had stepped right into it just as they had hoped.
A massive gulf separated reality from their earlier expectations. Han Qingyu, Wen Jifei, and Zhu Jiaming had all believed that since their opponents were cautious and wary, an attack would never come in a crowded, bustling venue.
To that end, they had previously dangled deliberate openings and laid traps to bait an assault, but every attempt had fallen flat.
None of them had imagined that the battle would ultimately erupt in such a grand setting, before a crowd of at least several thousand people.
There seemed to be a great deal to ponder here...
Yet there was no time.
*Boom!* Han Qingyu fell back, leapt into the air, and drove down in one fluid motion. His first strike blasted an enemy who had just lunged from the sand with an upward slash straight back into the earth.
At that moment, fireworks were still bursting fiercely in the night sky, and the spectators ahead were still cheering toward the heavens and the sea.
It was only when the explosive collision of source energy and the piercing shriek of clashing dead iron cut through the sound of the fireworks that the people behind, suddenly witnessing the carnage, cried out in terror...
Only then did the crowd ahead finally look back.
A curtain of sand soared halfway to the sky, showering down before their eyes like rain.
In that same instant, in at least several dozen spots, figures in dirt-colored combat uniforms burst straight from the sand, cutting down anyone in sight.
Amid horrifying screams... blood washed the ground.
The enemy beneath Wu Xu's feet never managed to leap out; lagging a beat too late, he was stomped right back down into the pit by Wu Xu's heel.
Wu Xu drew his blade in the same breath, transitioning into a sprinting horizontal sweep toward the empty ground behind Wen Jifei and He Tangtang... Two heads that had only just surfaced went flying.
"Left," he said.
He Tangtang swung his blade to the left at the command. *Clang!* The blow was parried. His opponent possessed formidable strength, springing backward the instant the blades met.
"Don't chase," Wu Xu warned. Gripping his war blade with both hands inverted, he plunged it straight into the patch of ground Wen Jifei was stepping toward.
The slight mound of sand that had just begun to swell collapsed back down, and blood surged to the surface.
Under such an ambush, out of the seven of them, only about two and a half were in immediate mortal danger: Wen Jifei, Zhe Qiuhong, and half for He Tangtang—though no one could say that aloud, lest it hurt his feelings.
Wu Xu shielded one and a half.
The young prince was fully capable of protecting himself.
Rusty Sister stood beside Zhe Qiuhong. The enemy beneath her feet failed to surge up; as his blade slashed upward, it seemed to strike an immovable wall, rebounding violently with even greater force. The spine of the blade cracked against his skull, killing him beneath the sand before he could even show his face.
Rusty Sister chose to take the blow head-on with her iron armor. Stamping one foot down, she shifted sideways, caught Zhe Qiuhong around the waist, and vaulted nearly a hundred meters away.
In that split second,
at least seven or eight blades slashed out from underground, striking the ground where they had stood just moments before.
Ahead, the sand where they landed began to bulge in a faint circle.
Rusty Sister ground to a halt. Flinging her right arm upward while gripping the hem of her red cloak, she tossed Zhe Qiuhong into the air. At the same time, her left hand drew her blade. Ducking low, she spun in a swift, sweeping horizontal circle...
*Shhk-clack!* Four men were instantly severed at the waist.
Rising to her feet, she jerked her right arm, catching Zhe Qiuhong back into her embrace after the doctor spun halfway through the air.
This opening wave of the ambush had lasted only about five seconds. Many on either side of the crowd hadn't even processed what was happening.
Yet there was no pause.
In real combat, there was no gap between a first and second wave; the enemy's optimal surprise attack had merely been repelled.
*Bang, bang, bang, bang...*
Plumes of sand erupted from the nearby ground one after another as nearly a hundred more combatants burst forth. Twisting midair, they converged on two locations in an overwhelming assault.
One was Rusty Sister and Zhe Qiuhong.
The other was the trio of Wen Jifei, Wu Xu, and He Tangtang.
Whoever was being protected was clearly the weakest—or so the attackers had deduced.
"Ahhh!" Women's screams finally tore through the night.
In a scene where forty or fifty warriors slashed midair toward a single point, sand swirled furiously... Rusty Sister moved to shield Zhe Qiuhong behind her, but the wind cracked behind her as well.
She pulled Zhe Qiuhong behind her anyway.
Because among her teammates was a man named Han Qingyu.
The onlookers shrieked at her action...
Amid the screams came the sounds of slicing air: *Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh... Shhk-clack...*
It was only when the leaping figures behind the red cloak began plummeting one after another that the crowd finally spotted the dead iron straight sword carving silent arcs as it spun through the air.
It whirled on, spraying arcs of blood.
"Is that... the Rusty Sister Dimple Slash?!"
"Is he really The King?!"
"...Major Qing?!"
Because they had come only to watch the fireworks, Han Qingyu carried just one blade on his back. The moment that blade left his hand, he reached backward and caught another.
This second blade had been hurled by Wen Jifei. His gun remained in the car.
At that moment, shielded amid the forest of blades, Dice threw the war blade and roared at the top of his lungs: "Hunting squad! The hunting squad is here!"
He was Dice—the only Dice in human history capable of stepping onto a battlefield facing supers, and one who, under any circumstance, would look to pull off a heist.
The instant Wen Jifei's shout rang out, people across the entire desert drew their blades. Trembling with dread, panic, and shrieks, they nevertheless drew their weapons without exception and formed formations with those nearest to them.
A genuine lull settled over the battlefield as a result.
The commotion beneath the sand subsided for the moment. The surviving enemies already on the surface pulled back in unison toward the flanks to assume their own formation.
The battle ground to a bizarre halt.
Silence briefly fell over the desert under the dark sky.
*Boom... crack! Swish, swish, swish, swish.*
A few lingering fireworks still rose into the sky, bursting into sparks.
As the sparks drifted down, the crowd turned their eyes toward a gap between the ranks. Ah Jing of the Azure Dragon Gang stood alone, blade held in one hand. The fight had torn open the buttons of his suit jacket, exposing his white shirt.
The night concealed the scar on his face.
"Are you Major Qing?" a woman's voice called out.
"Uncle Shiliang, is Ah Jing really Major Qing?" Lubi Azha asked with ill-timed excitement.
"..."
There was no answer.
*Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!* Three consecutive bursts of source energy shattered the quiet.
Ah Jing of the Azure Dragon Gang abruptly spun and cleaved downward, his blade appearing to slash at empty air... yet the two afterimages streaking in from left and right instantly proved that it only looked empty to those whose rank was too low to see.
*Boom!* In the blink of an eye, three dead iron war blades collided midair!
The moment the shockwave detonated, the three figures were thrown back in separate directions.
"Fonseca?!"
"Pierre?!"
Voices in the crowd cried out the attackers' names.
For days, everyone had been debating whether Ah Jing of the Azure Dragon Gang was truly The King and whether he might continue challenging the rankings after the New Year to claim the fifth or sixth spot. Now, by his own strength, he had just repelled a joint ambush from the fifth and eighth on the assassin rankings.
Ranked No. 5 on the assassin rankings: Fonseca.
Ranked No. 8 on the assassin rankings: Pierre.
They belonged to the same superpower...
"Theodore of the Black Hand," someone muttered numbly.
"Black Hand business. Bystanders, stand clear," the two attackers declared as they hit the ground.
Chapter 490