Boom! The curved wall of the General Staff Building shattered at the impact—not collapsed, but shattered.
In an instant, an immense plume of dust rose as rubble and earth flew through the air.
One hundred and twenty-seven pitch-black, colossal dead iron javelins burst through the dense, surging fog of dust, their pointed tips bristling in layered tiers like a forest of varied heights.
Carried upon every dead iron javelin was the combined, explosive surge of over a hundred Xiongzhanli warriors.
Boom! At this moment, Palace Square resembled an ocean—a raging, tempestuous sea.
The forest of giant lances and the charging ranks, like 127 fighter jets screaming across the sea surface, trampled the earth beneath their feet, unleashing not a howling wind, but the cascading, layered roar of endless, towering tidal waves.
To the front, a force to level mountains and overturn seas.
To the flanks, the autumn-chilled waters of the Neva River were swept up in the draft, surging back in reverse.
To the sides, the remaining roofs of the Winter Palace complex were torn away and hurled into the sky.
Everything upon the ground swept along like fallen leaves caught in a gale.
Blood flew through the air.
The fallen Azure warriors lying in pools of blood seemed to join the charge once more.
Atop the Alexander Column, the shattered angel with its broken wings, holding aloft a fractured cross, suddenly seemed to rise to its feet...
"Ura!"
At this moment, the ten thousand souls driving the giant spears roared and bellowed in unison.
Burly Slavic men, middle-aged and youth, ferocious faces bristling with stubble alongside clean, fair features.
Stout Xiongzhanli women whose figures had broadened with age,
Slender, beautiful young maidens still in their prime—
They had no need to aim.
No need to calculate angles or stagger their timing.
Nor did they possess the time or the ability to make any adjustments.
The only thing they could do, the only thing they needed to do, was charge. Stake everything they had, pool their strength to drive the massive javelins forward, and sprint onward with relentless momentum.
Merely to sprint and charge, more than ten thousand Xiongzhanli Azure warriors pushed their bodies to the absolute limit, surging until they coughed up blood.
This was not the charge with the greatest numbers in Azure's history, but it was undoubtedly the most magnificent, grand charge in the entire history of human source-weapon warfare.
The momentum unleashed in that single instant felt potent enough to obliterate everything in its path...
These were no mere 127 giant javelins—these were effectively 127 human-propelled, heavy dead iron source energy rockets fired simultaneously.
Boom! The colossal, soaring arc of the formation crashed toward the red-shoulder suspended in midair.
This was the strike that would decide the fate of this battle.
Nearly every sacrifice and preparation made by the Xiongzhanli Front prior to this moment had been for this single blow.
Mikhail's desperate holding action on the other flank had been meant to buy time for the people on the square to forge this chance for a kill; the relentless charges of countless Xiongzhanli Front soldiers had been intended not only to hold back the black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes behind the red-shoulder, but more importantly to create such a massive, chaotic melee to conceal this ambush; and as the sole super combat power present, Major General Anton had been assigned the decisive link—he had even prepared to die for it...
Because the once-mighty Xiongzhanli no longer possessed the power to face two red-shoulders head-on.
In terms of high-tier combat power, they had long since lost the pinnacle super of their nation's history, Butcher Ivan.
And then, not long before, they had lost Gennady and Stepan.
This was their only remaining hope.
...Yet Anton had failed to complete his part.
Even staking his life, he had been unable to slash the red-shoulder into the air and launch it aloft near the kill zone.
The core prerequisite of this killing trap: the red-shoulder had to be airborne.
Otherwise, with its speed, agility, and overwhelming combat power, the 127 giant javelins would never even touch it.
Only in the air would it lose its footing and its forward momentum...
Fortunately, General Gennady had arrived, taking over from Major General Anton and achieving it.
The former hero and mentor of Xiongzhanli—and later its heartbreaking traitor—had returned, standing alongside them once more to fight for this land and its people.
...The red-shoulder was airborne, at a spot not far from the kill zone.
What was more, its trajectory carried it upward and forward, making it appear as though it were throwing itself straight into the killing array.
Furthermore, the moment it was knocked aloft, it had slashed downward toward Gennady, creating a momentary lag in its source energy circulation and leaving its column sword out of defensive position.
Such an opening would last only an instant—exceedingly brief—yet on a battlefield like this, it was more than enough to alter and decide everything.
Perhaps the red-shoulder could still unleash one or two aerial bursts. Once Great Spikes reached the red-shoulder level, they were neither clumsy nor foolish; otherwise, the Xiongzhanli Front would not have needed so much elaborate groundwork.
Yet even if it burst with power, it could not choose to go up, down, or to either side; it could only forcibly reverse all momentum in an attempt to retreat backward.
And one or two midair bursts backward were doomed to be insufficient to put enough distance between them... because at this moment, the people charging on the ground and the giant lances in their hands would not stop.
Thus, the red-shoulder had no chance to land. Even if it managed to, it would only delay until an even weaker moment before being struck.
...
Gennady stood up and turned to look, the fierce wind tugging at his body.
Anton hit the ground, looking up.
Clang! Crack!
The red-shoulder chose to defend with a hasty burst of power. The sharp tip of the first dead iron javelin to reach its chest snapped off on impact.
The more than one hundred Azure warriors driving that javelin coughed up blood again, and many collapsed.
At the same time, however, even more giant javelins thrust toward the red-shoulder's chest, face, neck, abdomen... to its left and right, above and below.
The red-shoulder tried to swing its column sword, but the blade was struck repeatedly by the massive spears—thrust after thrust, impaling, clattering...
Simultaneously, the arm holding the sword was struck again, and again, and again...
Its other arm, which had done nothing, was also struck again, and again, and again...
Clang! Clang, clang, clang, clang...
Pfft!
Pierced through.
A lance drove clean through the red-shoulder's abdomen.
Then came a rapid succession of pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft...
Piercing, piercing, piercing...
"Screee-owwwh!" A wretched screech tore through the air.
The red-shoulder's grip failed, and its column sword fell.
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink...
In midair, it was impaled repeatedly, struck again and again...
It struggled, trying to raise both hands to grip a dead iron javelin piercing its chest and push itself backward, but its arms never had the chance to rise.
Because the colossal formation never halted; the following lances kept surging forward without pause.
Dead.
The red-shoulder that had just slaughtered ordinary source energy warriors like stepping on ants—the red-shoulder that had seemed entirely unstoppable—was dead.
In the picture of this moment, its impaled corpse hung suspended upon more than a dozen giant lances.
Foul red and blue blood spilled continuously to the ground.
The Azure warriors of Xiongzhanli... had killed a red-shoulder, shattering it to pieces.
Yet at this moment,
there were no cheers on the square, because the vast majority of warriors had not stopped at all. Throats vibrating with passionate, low growls, like raging bears and vengeful wolves, their eyes bloodshot, they continued charging forward.
Trampling past the bodies of their fallen comrades on the ground, wading through blood, they lowered the lance formation and crashed straight into the ranks of Great Spikes ahead...
At the same time, Gennady turned to face the Winter Palace.
Anton pushed himself up, facing the Winter Palace.
Inside that ruined complex of buildings, there was still another red-shoulder.
The sounds of battle were drifting out from within...
"Teacher," Anton said.
"I'm fine. Four should be enough," Gennady said, glancing at Anton and gesturing to the tenth-generation device on his back.
With that, teacher and student erupted with source energy and plunged into the complex.
Gennady said four because Stepan was already inside. At last, all four active super combat powers of the Azure Xiongzhanli Front were fighting side by side once more.
Chapter 647