When Someone Doesn't Want to Live

Wu Xu stared blankly at Wen Jifei. "Choose," Wen Jifei said, his gaze resolute. The implication was that they could rely only on luck now. In that case, they might as well let a directionally challenged person who got lost everywhere he went—someone who had never once been responsible for deciding a direction—make this choice. "All right." Wu Xu understood. A one-in-five chance. He knew what this choice might mean, but he did not refuse. In this squad, no one had ever refused to bear responsibility and consequences, or guilt and pain... Knowing there was no time to hesitate and that analyzing it was useless anyway, Wu Xu half turned without even looking and pointed straight ahead. "This way." "That's a wall," Wen Jifei snapped. "...This one." This was the first time in Wu Xu's life that he had ever led the way. After he made his pick, everyone prepared to move out. Yet Wen Jifei didn't move. "Not this one. Pick again," he said suddenly. Things did not seem to be going quite as expected. Not knowing the reason or logic behind it, Wu Xu turned to look at Wen Jifei, froze for a second, and hesitantly pointed again. "Then this one." "Pick again." "Th-this one?" "Pick again." "This..." "Good. We're taking the one left over." "..." "From now on, ignore every fork. We're seeing this road through to the very end." Having said that, Wen Jifei took the lead and sprinted forward. The others were stunned for about half a second before all catching up, including Wu Xu. "I thought you were going to trust Wu Xu," the Little Prince said. "I was at first. But in that instant just now, I suddenly remembered that Cat Girl confessed her feelings to him earlier, so I decided to do the exact opposite," Wen Jifei said. This logic convinced everyone. "What if Qingzi gives up and stops tugging at the column sword because he tried too many times without getting any response?! He's fighting Alphonse, after all..." Yin Caixin spoke with tears in her voice. "He won't!" Wen Jifei said. "Han Qingyu has never known how to give up." The seven of them sprinted at full speed through the passage. Surges of source energy resonated from behind. They did not stop, nor did they look back. ... Crack! The tip of the knight broadsword stabbed straight into his shoulder hollow, yet the person before him suddenly vanished. The sound of skin and muscle being sliced open traveled through the air, proving he hadn't truly vanished out of thin air. In that situation just now, he should have retreated, but he hadn't. A turn that practically invited self-injury... near-teleportation—Han Qingyu finally unleashed the specialty borrowed from Theodore, abruptly appearing behind Alphonse with twin blades hacking down. Slash! The stronger left-hand blade slashed empty air, while the right-hand blade struck true, carving from shoulder all the way down to waist before... being dodged as well. It was a pity, but this was the reality of battlefield constraints and the gap in strength. Han Qingyu had been disappointed many times in this fight; by now, disappointment had ceased to be an emotion he felt. In short, every cut he could land was a cut landed. On the other side, Alphonse dodged all the way to a corner of the wall, cold sweat breaking out across his twisted neck. Had his reaction speed and micro-movements not been fast enough, that slash just now might well have claimed his life. Furthermore, a stream of death energy invading through the wound was currently surging rapidly toward his heart. "Multiple specialties?!" Alphonse was briefly bewildered. He swiftly circulated his life source energy to envelop his internal organs. The death energy inside his body wasn't particularly strong, making it not too difficult to neutralize... However—whoosh! Han Qingyu came again, lunging forward like a madman with blades swinging. His left shoulder hollow had just been pierced, yet his left hand still gripped a blade... After two straight minutes of frantic bombardment, unable to keep going any longer, he finally fell back. Han Qingyu crashed heavily onto the ground backward, scrambling up in disarray... Staggering a few steps, he leaned his back against the wall, barely keeping his feet. Blood streamed from his mouth, nose, and body. With over a dozen wounds of varying sizes covering him, he stood there, parting his lips as he struggled for breath. A pause had finally emerged from the chaos. Alphonse pressed the left hand holding his short sword against an abdominal wound, blood leaking between his fingers. Counting the slash on his back, Alphonse now had four wounds in total; relatively speaking, he held an overwhelming advantage. Yet his mood did not match his advantage. "You...!" Looking into Han Qingyu's eyes, Alphonse uttered just a single word before cutting off, his hand quickly grabbing a fistful of medicinal powder and smearing it over his abdomen. Although judging by the wound's condition this was futile, he did it anyway. With the battle reaching this point, Alphonse finally understood: from the start of this clash, the person across from him had never intended to win. He wasn't even considering surviving... He wants to drag me down to die with him, Alphonse thought, a flicker of panic surfacing in his eyes. Supported by the wall, Han Qingyu stood looking at him, a bleak grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "I told you. I will resolve this." Just as Alphonse had guessed, his method of resolving it was to fight with the resolve to drag Alphonse down to death alongside him. Even if he failed to accomplish that, he would at least severely wound him to the point where Alphonse was powerless to fight on. That way, Plague Chicken, Wu Xu, Rusty Sister... they would be safe. Otherwise, facing an Alphonse whose combat strength remained intact—and potentially alongside another super combat power—they would all die. "Quite courageous... but is that all?" Overcoming the panic in his mind, Alphonse sneered and gestured toward the wounds on Han Qingyu's body. "Do you really think you can pull that off?" "Yeah." Han Qingyu nodded solemnly. Because the back of his head tapped against the wall, bits of dirt fell onto his shoulders. Then he continued, "I wonder how many times the first-generation Starlight has been gravely wounded throughout nearly a century in Azure?" A baffling question. A hint of confusion flashed in Alphonse's eyes. Grave injuries? He truly had suffered very few. After that initial feat of riding alone to rescue his leader and winning the Star of Azure, it seemed there were no more. In the decades that followed, he had first guarded the home base at the alliance headquarters, then came to the Third Fixed Exploration Site to "retire" and "eke out a living"... He had hardly ever experienced a grueling battle again. "In my few short years, I've probably had more than you," Han Qingyu said slowly. This was his only advantage right now, or rather the only area where his experience exceeded Alphonse's—the experience of being gravely wounded, hovering on the brink of death, and continuing to fight while at death's door. He had vastly more experience in that than Alphonse. Alphonse looked at him, stared for a few seconds, and looked away. "Are you afraid, first-generation Starlight?" "Heh." "Then let's die together." In an instant, all his source energy surged. Han Qingyu kicked off the wall in a single stride and lunged once more. Both left and right blades left his hands, spinning low along the ground to shear at Alphonse's ankles. The instant he reclaimed the column sword, his body sprang up horizontally... Gripping the sword with both hands before his head, unstoppable, he spun and thrust toward Alphonse. In the air, beads of blood scattered in strings and arcs from his rapidly spinning, lunging body. Alphonse retreated. Now that he knew his opponent had abandoned all desire to live and wanted to drag him down together, Alphonse grew increasingly cautious... Then let it drag on longer; he was in no hurry. However... The first-generation Starlight, who believed he possessed all intelligence and information, did not actually know: Major The Qing before him, renowned throughout the source energy world for one desperate battle to the death after another—this fellow whom young soldiers constantly held up as an emblem of courage—had in truth never been someone who genuinely didn't want to live. He feared death just about as much as Alphonse did. Before coming here this time, Han Qingyu hadn't gone home, nor had he seen his mother and father... He wanted to return to them alive. Now, fighting toward death, he was prepared to die, but at the same time he was still fighting to live. As long as he still possessed the strength to fight, he had never once given up. He had continuously been attempting to guide the column sword and locate Rusty Sister and the others. For him to give up, his condition would have to deteriorate to the point where even if Wu Xu and the others arrived, it wouldn't make any difference. ... "Stop!" Amid their continuous, furious sprint, Rusty Sister suddenly froze, standing dead still. The next second, everyone halted, turned around, and stared at her with reddened eyes. No one made a sound, as if afraid speaking aloud might scare something away. "Is it my imagination? Did I only think it twitched because I wanted it so badly?" That tremor had been far too faint. Rusty Sister looked down at the column sword she had held gripped in her hand all the way... Clenching her teeth, she lifted her head, turned slowly to the right, and said: "Blast it open." The wall was thick, sandwiching a layer of dead iron over a meter deep. They threw themselves upon it as if lunging to slaughter an enemy.