This was the lair Alphonse had painstakingly developed for over half a century, and it was also a specialized design he had crafted after mastering all intelligence reports.
In the dim light, glancing around revealed a layer of dead iron sandwiched between the earthen walls, several meters thick and seemingly forged into a single continuous piece.
The opening to the passage in the center was not large; in fact, the entire long, dim downward passage, including its slight bends and turns, was narrow—wide enough only for a single person to swing a blade.
When two combatants possessed comparable strength, one person swinging a blade could completely seal it off.
At this moment, under Alphonse's continuous downward slashes, Han Qingyu leaned back and parried with great difficulty while rapidly plummeting further down.
In this situation, he could not get back up, nor could the small blue light column sword carry him back; the space above was completely blocked by Alphonse and the longsword in his hand.
"Bang!" On the surface, following the abrupt shift, Elegy of the Square began to roar.
The tremendous howl of an erupting armored suit surged like a speeding train hurtling head-on.
The full eruption of two super combat powers sent a violent gale sweeping away everything shattered on the ground.
"Qingzi!" they shouted from afar.
Han Qingyu had made a mistake.
He had not underestimated Alphonse's combat strength in the slightest, but in terms of strategy, he should not have underestimated an old scoundrel who had lived for over a hundred and twenty years.
What was more, this man ranked fifth on the Dome List, possessing such combat power while embodying the absolute pinnacle of craven survival in the source energy world.
Just as Ne had told Liu Shiheng: to take craven survival to its absolute extreme was actually terrifying.
Facing the final struggle of such a man, they should have prepared for the worst and maintained the highest vigilance... but their thinking had been swayed by Alphonse's earlier series of skirmishes and harassments, making them think that was all there was to it.
Because of this, they had willingly stepped into this trap.
In the end, their formation had been split, leaving Han Qingyu isolated.
Psychologically speaking, since Alphonse had designed and engineered this opportunity, it likely proved he was confident he could kill Han Qingyu in a one-on-one fight.
And judging from their previous clashes, the assessment made by Han Qingyu and the others was entirely unanimous: Alphonse's combat strength exceeded Ivan's.
Battle cries echoed from overhead.
Out on the surface, the enemy super combat power was leading Alphonse's remaining loyalists, fighting with all their might to intercept Wu Xu, Plague Chicken, and the others.
If things progressed like this, that super would not last long before dying, and all of those loyalists would die.
However, if Wu Xu and the others did not run afterward... and they certainly would not run... they would likely have to face Alphonse without Han Qingyu.
"Take me down! Take me down, Qingzi!" Rusty Sister's voice called.
The area around the passage entrance was temporarily still under enemy control and might close soon; Rusty Sister's voice traveled down the long corridor.
She could help. Even though she wasn't a super yet, her unique traits meant she could play a crucial role in this fight.
And Han Qingyu indeed had an opportunity to bring her down.
She was clad entirely in dead iron and carrying a small column sword on her back.
If not for his reluctance to erupt his energy, Han Qingyu could normally have pulled her over from any corner of the room whenever he wanted to mess with her.
But if he brought her down, she would first have to face Alphonse standing in between...
"Kill them and get out first!"
Han Qingyu shouted back, and then did nothing.
...
Bang! His feet finally touched ground.
There was light here.
The instant Han Qingyu made contact with the floor, he sprang backward, dodging Alphonse's downward slash upon landing.
At the same time, he swiftly surveyed his surroundings.
There might be an exit passage here leading elsewhere, but he saw none. The space he saw was far smaller than expected, roughly structured like an irregular courtyard clearing connected to a narrow room of forty to fifty square meters with three earthen walls.
Due to springing backward just now, Han Qingyu was currently nearing that room-like enclosure.
Meanwhile, Alphonse landed without the slightest pause and lunged forward once more with killing intent.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang! Amid successive collisions of dead iron, Han Qingyu coughed up blood and retreated continuously.
Engaged in rapid, continuous clashes without preparation, he was at an absolute disadvantage. This was not only because Alphonse was extraordinarily strong, but also because this was a battlefield Alphonse had specifically designed and chosen.
In such a confined space, the speed Han Qingyu possessed through column sword maneuvers and his own explosive bursts was restricted to the greatest extent, while Alphonse's speed in tight spaces, fine details, and absolute velocity was brought out to its ultimate peak.
Boom! Another collision sent both of their figures tumbling into the room area almost simultaneously.
Alphonse rose to his feet and removed his face mask.
He was indeed missing the hair on one side of his head, which turned his artistic temperament into something resembling a lunatic.
This was also the first time Han Qingyu had seen that greasy, excessively youthful face from so close up. The youthful sheen on it looked like an overly robust dung fly.
The revulsion was still hard to shake off. Cough, cough—Han Qingyu spat a mouthful of bloody foam.
"A powerful Yanxiu, rich and refined life source energy... I imagine you must be quite delectable. Your teammates outside shouldn't be too shabby either."
The corners of Alphonse's mouth curved into a smile, and he spoke in English:
"I will devour your corpse bit by bit right in front of them. Then them... and then, thanks to your gifts, perhaps one day it will be Chen Buer."
Han Qingyu wanted to curse him out.
Yet he could not speak. He was circulating his bone source with all his might to purge the devouring force that had invaded his body after parrying strike after strike, while simultaneously sensing its nature...
Across from him, Alphonse drew a shortsword from behind his waist.
In his hands were one medium and one short knight's sword, both nearly identical in design.
Originally there were three weapons in this set; the longest one had been taken to the plateau years ago by Sean to kill people, and had never returned.
...
"Down!"
On the surface, just as the one-sided offensive was nearing completion, an entirely unexpected development occurred.
The entrance had not closed. Instead, the enemy super combat power pulled back after finishing his stalling action and jumped down the passage voluntarily.
Some of the surviving loyalists leaped down after him.
It was not difficult to understand why the entrance had not been sealed; even if it closed, once the enemies were wiped out, they could simply blast it open.
Yet the enemy suddenly taking the initiative to drop down first... that made no sense.
He Tangtang: "What's going on?"
Wen Jifei: "No idea... go down!"
Wu Xu and Rusty Sister had already leapt in.
A brief, hurried exchange, without time for guesses or predictions, and everyone leapt into that passage one after another.
Rumble, crash, crash...
As they were falling, the passage suddenly began to vibrate violently, earth and stone collapsing in torrents as though an earthquake had struck.
...
Han Qingyu could faintly hear the chaotic noises coming from the lower exit of the passage as people jumped down; at that exact moment, the ground beneath his feet and the surrounding walls shook just as violently.
"Are you curious about what I'm doing?" Alphonse asked with a cold sneer opposite him.
Then he answered his own question: "Shifting!"
Alphonse made a lateral shifting gesture with both hands and said, "That is an entirely different passage now. They will end up somewhere else, waiting for me to grace them with my arrival—bearing your corpse."
In that instant, Han Qingyu was gnawed by an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
"People with pointless emotions are always the most foolish, and the easiest to manipulate."
Alphonse closed his eyes, then opened them.
"It is always like this. It was the same in the proving grounds. Sometimes I targeted only a single person, yet his foolish friends would invariably deliver themselves to my door one after another."
"You... cough, cough... as a former hero of Azure, do you truly have not the slightest hesitation or regret?" Han Qingyu spoke for the first time, asking a seemingly naive question.
"It is destiny. A destiny urging me toward eternity."
Alphonse's abstract, neurotic answer made no mention whatsoever of those two words.
"All right. Then I'll ask you again in a bit,"
Han Qingyu said. With that, he released his left hand from the column sword, letting it plant firmly into the ground before him, and drew the blade in his left hand.
Chapter 574