"Is Alphonse a Yanxiu?"
Inside the chapel built entirely of blue glass, there was no red wine or refreshments this time, nor a female secretary waiting on the side. Liu Shiheng sat leaning forward, asking the empty air and layers of glass with earnest eyes.
This was the first time Young Master Shiheng had taken the initiative to come have a chat about Alphonse.
He had been granted permission to enter and leave freely here long ago, but the few times he had visited on his own before, he had stayed outside, chatting with the female secretary for a bit before leaving. Unless invited, he never stepped into the chapel on his own initiative.
Yet last night, after seeing the intelligence that Qingzi and the others had officially launched an attack on the Third Fixed Exploration Site, Liu Shiheng had not slept a wink.
He understood Han Qingyu and knew that Qingzi feared unexpected complications, was unwilling to wait any longer, and did not want to resolve this through political maneuvers using Azure's hands. But still... this was far too reckless! Please, don't let anything happen to them!
"You haven't gotten out of bed yet, have you? Uncle Ne, are you there? Rise and shine!"
Habit was a terrifying force. Subtly, over time, Liu Shiheng had grown accustomed to speaking into thin air, subconsciously treating this blue glass chapel as Ne's true body.
"I don't need to sleep, so how could I get out of bed? Of course he is," Ne's voice arrived a few seconds later. He paused before adding, "It's just that Alphonse's situation is rather special."
"His Yanxiu is terrible, right?" Liu Shiheng asked expectantly.
"You could say that, because it lacks what Alphonse desires most."
"What?"
"A lifespan stretching into millennia, or even capable of advancing to ten thousand years." Ne paused here. "However, its other aspect is actually quite terrifying."
"Wh-Why?!"
"Because its trait allows it to devour others' life source energy. At a certain stage, it even has the chance to devour relatively weak Yanxiu wills... This is the only Yanxiu I have seen so far capable of devouring a Yanxiu's will."
These words were quite a mouthful.
Liu Shiheng understood, but given his combat power, whether he understood or not made no practical difference.
"How about you just tell me straight, Uncle Ne—can Qingzi and the guys win?"
"...With their lineup, if they clash head-on, Alphonse shouldn't stand much of a chance," Ne said.
"Phew!" Liu Shiheng breathed a sigh of relief.
"However, if a one-on-one opportunity is created..." Ne paused, bypassing everyone else as he continued, "In that scenario, if it were Alphonse from thirty years ago facing your friend, how should I put it? That would be a fight even I'd want to watch."
"Thirty years ago... Why thirty years ago? So he's gotten weaker now, right? He's too old," Liu Shiheng asked earnestly.
"No, I didn't say that. At a hundred and twenty years old, Alphonse is far stronger than before because he's been constantly feeding. If there are only two or three people in this world who have a chance of forcing out that slash from Chen Buer, then a desperate Alphonse fighting with his life on the line could count as half a person. Not because he is as powerful as the other two, but because his trait happens to target your Legion Commander's weakness," Ne said.
"Do those two include you?"
"Of course."
"Then what if you faced Qingzi and his group..."
"I would swiftly crush them all into fertilizer for flowerpots."
"...You're bragging, aren't you?"
"Tell them to come try." Sounding slightly sullen, Ne muttered, then continued, "So if Alphonse were to face your friend one-on-one, to use your phrasing, sixty-forty? Roughly, perhaps; I don't know the exact details of their current state."
Ne's voice returned to indifference.
"You're talking nonsense, aren't you?!" Liu Shiheng stood up, arguing, "Isn't Alphonse tied for fifth with that Ivan? The intelligence clearly said that when Qingzi fought Ivan, he only lost by a narrow margin. Our Qingzi always grows stronger the more he fights..."
"Haha, you're getting agitated. How rare, Young Master Shiheng. Though what's the point of asking me all this here?" Ne gave a chuckle. Even as he called it pointless, he still said, "If I'm not entirely clear on other people's situations, Butcher Ivan is someone I've been watching all along."
In truth, this was equivalent to admitting they were currently somewhere in Antarctica.
Yet Liu Shiheng failed to notice this entirely.
"Over the past ten-odd years, Ivan has been deteriorating. The relative scarcity of resources is only a secondary factor; more importantly, his will to live has gradually faded. Self-loathing is an agonizing ordeal and devastating torment, both mentally and physically," Ne said. "So the current Ivan is actually not qualified to stand tied alongside Alphonse."
Liu Shiheng fell silent, his expression slumping, and said nothing more.
"Actually, I originally intended to say seventy-thirty in a one-on-one. That extra ten percent was out of consideration for your feelings." This was not mocking; Ne's tone sounded like an explanation or consolation to Liu Shiheng.
"No need, don't give me any consideration. Because this one-on-one you talk about sounds completely stupid. The Han Qingyu I know isn't someone foolish or excessively concerned with saving face; otherwise, he wouldn't have brought so many people with him," Liu Shiheng said.
"Ordinary soldiers are nothing more than nourishment before Alphonse, utterly useless... Well, after all, I don't know your friend that well," Ne said. "However, as for Alphonse, that's also a man who has lived in the most ignominious, scraping-by way imaginable, making his final struggle. That in itself is quite interesting."
…………
Third Fixed Exploration Site, the building complex. The morning sun had already risen, casting morning glow across rooftops, walls, and streets.
The advance down the main street had also reached its later half.
Murmuring blood flowed sluggishly in rivulets between the paving blue stones. On the street behind Han Qingyu and the others, at least fifty to sixty corpses dressed identically to Alphonse lay strewn about in disarray.
Adding this number to those killed on rooftops, balconies, and inside the buildings, the actual losses among Alphonse's diehard loyalists were likely close to a hundred.
This included two top-tiers.
Not many remained.
During this time, the enemies had mounted five ambush assaults. In two of them, Alphonse had mingled among the attackers.
Because both sides were on guard against each other, he had failed to accomplish his aims completely, and Han Qingyu and the others had been unable to trap and keep him there.
"Rusty Sister, are you all right?" With his clothes also drenched in blood, Han Qingyu stopped on the street, facing the opening of a side alley with his head lowered slightly, asking without turning around.
The iron armor shook its head. "I'm fine. What about you?"
Rusty Sister was indeed fine, except that her piece of jade bone was shrinking, dwindling until it was only the size of a little finger.
This thing was formidable, but unfortunately, it was currently effective only on her.
"Of course I'm fine. His devour attacks can only bully the weak..." Han Qingyu said.
"Who are you calling weak?!"
Rusty Sister asked, Wu Xu asked, and Theodore, letting one arm hang limp, parted his lips and barely held back.
"I wasn't talking about you," Han Qingyu replied with a smile, looking up, and then—*swoosh!*
With an eruption devoid of warning, Han Qingyu suddenly sprang into motion, charging toward a two-story building near the mouth of the alley ahead.
Of those present, only Wen Jifei was not surprised.
Because the two of them had actually been tracking Alphonse's location the whole time. Wen Jifei's bullets and Han Qingyu's dispersing bone source were both verifying which one was Alphonse and where he was.
Now, he was inside that building.
"*Aoo-ong!*" As Han Qingyu sprinted forward, a colossal phantom silhouette appeared in the air for the first time in this battle.
In an instant, more than a dozen black-clad figures lost control of themselves, tumbling down from rooftops and balconies.
The large blue light column sword was hurled from Han Qingyu's two hands, churning light and air as it slammed toward the building.
Then, he drew his blade.
*Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang...*
Across the long street behind him, near and far, the dead iron war blades beside and in the hands of all the corpses, as well as those on the balconies and rooftops, all leapt into the air at this moment, shooting forward en masse.
Corpses were yanked upward, then dropped back down.
Dead iron war blades embedded inside nearby walls tore through masonry, shattering the entire street.
*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...*
In the morning breeze, nearly a hundred war blades whistled down the long street, following Han Qingyu to bombard that two-story building.
Chapter 572