In truth, Han Qingyu had always acted with plenty of cunning, and Wen Jifei and the young prince were by no means fools, but up against Alphonse this time, they were still too green.
Aside from careful scheming and calculated planning, there was another crucial reason for this predicament: Alphonse had severed every trace of his own humanity, yet he excelled at exploiting it in others.
In his very first countermeasure, he had decided to sacrifice his own flesh-and-blood son—his final blood tie to this world.
The first step of the second plan—relentless rounds of harassment along the long street—he kept that super combat power hidden and sent over a hundred diehard loyalists to their deaths, solely to mislead Han Qingyu and the others;
The second step, the lure at the small building, had likewise been a trap paved with human lives;
And then the third step: the super combat power now elsewhere, along with the last of his loyalists, were in reality also discarded pawns...
On the flip side, confronted with humanity and emotion, Wen Jifei and the others had ultimately succumbed to panic and impulse, losing their usual reason and discernment.
They should have stopped to analyze the suspicious points and pinpoint the location step by step; they should have gone outside to call in the tens of thousands of troops waiting above, even if only to help search...
Instead, they had leaped straight down after them.
...
The "earthquake" ended, and the dirt pattering down the walls settled into silence. Han Qingyu gave another tug at the small column sword, but there was no response whatsoever.
This indicated that after the passage shifted, the place where Wen Jifei, Rusty Sister, and the others landed lay beyond his control range.
Perhaps they were fighting, hunting down that super combat power and Alphonse's remaining loyalists; or perhaps they were wandering aimlessly through the labyrinth of the underground city...
...until Alphonse killed Han Qingyu and went after them.
So if Han Qingyu died like this...
"Once I die, they might all die." Han Qingyu was acutely aware of this now, just as he was acutely aware of the gap in combat strength between himself and Alphonse.
"Phoo! Phoo!" Lowering his head for one last attempt, he blew twice into the communicator, but it still gave no response.
Han Qingyu felt a brief pang of sadness... then raised his head, gripped his blades with both hands, and looked toward Alphonse.
"Are you worried?" The subterranean lamps cast a greenish, oily sheen over Alphonse's face as he asked, "Are you feeling guilty? Because you will drag them down and get them killed."
"Yes." Defying Alphonse's expectations, Han Qingyu nodded, admitting both his worry and guilt, before declaring resolutely, "Which is why I'm going to resolve this."
The moment the words left his mouth, his device erupted. Liquid source energy surged, life source energy flared, bone source churned, and all four turbines spun at their peak as Han Qingyu charged forward, blades in hand.
This was his first proactive assault in this confrontation.
The cramped space offered none of the sudden maneuverability needed for Rusty Sister's Dimple Slash or sweeping strikes with the column sword. After a mere three steps, Han Qingyu twisted sideways to the left. The column sword shot forward hugging his back, hurtling straight for Alphonse's face, while he pressed down his right-hand war blade, dragging it across to slice at Alphonse's midsection.
He executed the inverted V-slash he had used most frequently as a recruit.
Boom! Alphonse's left-hand longsword batted away the column sword, while the short sword in his right hand shot upright to guard his waist and abdomen.
Clang-clang-clang-clang—!
The straight blade screeched against the short sword, spraying sparks.
Impeded by the friction, Han Qingyu's momentum slowed slightly.
Seizing the opening, Alphonse pivoted on his left foot and spun around. Swish! The tip of his left longsword flicked across, carving an open wound into Han Qingyu's back.
At the same time, he completed his turn, still facing forward squarely.
Han Qingyu, on the other hand, now had his back turned to him.
Yet for the second half of the inverted V-slash, Han Qingyu did not turn around, nor did he hesitate for a single instant... Kicking off the ground, he catapulted backward at an angle, his left hand gripping the blade in reverse as he swept it back, slashing toward Alphonse's waist and abdomen.
"Foolish! Does he want to take another cut?!" With no time to hesitate, Alphonse followed suit, sealing his midsection with the short sword in his right hand while whirling his left longsword in a slash.
He was right—the tip of the sword grazed across Han Qingyu's back once more.
Only this time, amid the screeching friction between his left-hand straight blade and the short sword, Han Qingyu forcefully wrenched his body, flipping over to slash upward with his right-hand blade, carving a cut into Alphonse's flank as well.
Two wounds traded for one—he seemed more than willing to accept such an outcome. The instant his feet struck the ground, he paid no attention to his injuries, his body already whirling back into another slash.
...
Elsewhere in the underground city.
A frantic, furious pursuit and search was unfolding here. In just a few short minutes, over a dozen more bodies of Alphonse's men had been left behind in the corridors.
Wen Jifei ran with Elegy of the Square held high, firing continuously on the move.
In the sniper scope, the enemy super combat power was veering around a bend... This was the seventh opportunity; Wen Jifei had already fired six shots at him.
Yet the terrain here was far too convoluted, almost entirely composed of short, twisting fork paths. Firearms had very poor hit effectiveness, and even if a bullet struck, it could not outright kill a super.
This time, a sudden flicker of confusion flashed through Wen Jifei's mind... and his finger resting on the trigger ultimately did not squeeze down.
"Halt! Everyone stop... stop chasing!"
Lowering his gun and halting, he shouted to pull the others to a stop as well. Wen Jifei turned in a circle where he stood, counting six passages.
He lowered his head and began to think, sorting through the entire sequence of events: first, Qingzi and Alphonse had plunged into the underground city together, then the enemies holding them off outside had voluntarily jumped down, and they had leaped after them, followed by that sudden earthquake in the hundreds of meters of winding tunnels...
"Ah! Where on earth is Qingzi? How could there be no sound at all?" He Tangtang muttered anxiously as he turned around, counting the tunnels.
Stopping the pursuit now was something he could understand, since these enemies were very likely leading them astray. But they had clearly jumped down in the same manner—why wasn't there any sign of activity?
"Qingzi isn't here," Wen Jifei said.
"No shit, of course I know he's not right here! I mean—" Anxious and flustered, He Tangtang snapped.
"What I mean is, where we landed isn't the same place Qingzi fell to."
He Tangtang: "...How could that be?!"
"That's exactly how it is. Otherwise, since their goal was to stop us from regrouping, they would never have willingly jumped down. And then there was that minor tremor... That means the drop tunnel we took wasn't the same one Qingzi went through at all."
Wen Jifei had finally grasped the root of the problem. If they kept searching like this, they would never find Han Qingyu.
Even after his explanation, He Tangtang still didn't quite understand, nor did Wu Xu... But neither spoke again, instead looking earnestly at Wen Jifei.
"Then what do we do?" Rusty Sister asked softly, afraid of breaking Wen Jifei's train of thought.
"Get as close to him as possible. We're all underground, so at the very least we can get near him, and then... break through the walls."
The two sections had to be separated, so searching along existing paths would never get them there.
Their only option was to breach the walls. But—
"Where do we breach?!" Theodore asked, looking at the layers upon layers of walls surrounding them.
"No idea, but for now we head back," the young prince said. "Logically speaking, those people definitely wanted to lure us as far away from Qingzi as possible. So, we retrace our steps."
"Right. Let's move," Wen Jifei said, his device erupting into gear.
Everyone activated their devices and bolted.
Guided by the corpses on the ground, the seven of them quickly made their way back to their landing spot. Yet there was still no sound, nor was there any reaction from the small blue light column sword strapped to Rusty Sister's back.
"What now?" He Tangtang looked at the eight passages before them. Excluding the one they had just traveled, seven remained. "How about one tunnel per person?"
It seemed like a reasonable suggestion.
If they each took one passage, four of them would be useful upon arriving—some more so, some less—while the other three would be useless even if they reached him... Four against three; it was a gamble worth taking.
At the same time, however, because of that enemy super combat power and the final twenty-odd diehards under Alphonse, if any of the remaining six were cornered and besieged—with the exception of Wu Xu—they would in all likelihood die.
There was an even harder, more critical problem: how would each person confirm they had found the right direction? There were walls separating them, potentially very thick ones.
On that front, unless they got close enough to feel the tremors of combat, the small column sword on Rusty Sister's back seemed to offer the only glimmer of hope—provided Qingzi was still trying to locate them.
"We have to stick together. We can't split up," Wen Jifei gritted out, then looked up and forced a relaxed grin. "Otherwise, whoever survives will be hated to death by Han Qingchong."
"Then..." Standing on a small clearing at an unidentified junction in the underground city, the seven faced the seven passages.
"Eliminate these two. Their directions are close to the one we just took, so their probability is lowest. That leaves five..." Wen Jifei paused for a few seconds, turned, and called out, "Wu Xu."
"Hm?"
"You choose."
Chapter 575