Even at this moment, the distance was still rather far. None of the forty-five fleeing Azure soldiers dared to slow down. Gripping their blades, they sprinted for their lives toward the mountain pass.
They didn't even have time to glance back.
Because behind them, the relentless pursuit of the Great Spike swarm hadn't stopped. Heavy, swift footsteps rumbled against the ground, and the whistling rush of armor tearing through the wind drew ever closer.
Only now, one after another, as they charged forward, the creatures suddenly collapsed. Their heavy bodies, encased in dead iron, skidded violently across the sandy, rocky ground before slamming hard into the cliffside.
These sounds were pure music to their ears.
The scene behind them took shape in the soldiers' minds.
They could vividly picture the scene unfolding between the two mountains.
"Fuck... I'm about to cry," Qin Guowen, his steps staggering from his injuries, suddenly turned his head and shouted with emotion.
Just moments ago, when his wounds burst open, he had already braced himself mentally to turn back, face death, and make one final contribution... But then, gunshots abruptly rang out, and a familiar figure appeared.
In that instant, he truly had almost burst into tears.
The feeling inside was hard to describe. It was like hell was chasing you from behind, drawing closer and closer with nowhere left to run, when suddenly light appeared ahead, and a battle angel descended.
Qin Guowen thought this for just a moment—a single moment—before resolutely abandoning the comparison.
Because angels and such were just too chilling a thought. Applied to Miss Milla, it was fine, but that bastard Plague Chicken... Angel, my ass!
Meanwhile, the Armenian squad members fleeing alongside them, as well as some of the soldiers from Squad 1426, felt none of the awkward discomfort born from familiarity, nor could they suppress the emotions churning in their chests.
Laughing in loud release and weeping in silence, they sprinted toward the pass, yelling and jabbering excitedly.
"The God of Guns!"
"Elegy of the Square?!"
"Yes! It's Second Lieutenant Wen!"
Their certain shouts were laced with joy, excitement, and even reverence. To them, there were simply too many stories and legends surrounding Second Lieutenant Wen and his rifle, Elegy of the Square, over the years.
The legends went further than that, for whenever a story involved Second Lieutenant Wen Jifei, it often brought several other names along with it.
"God bless!"
"Stream Vanguard is here!"
"Major Qing, Lieutenant Wu Xu, and Iron Armor are here..."
Even though they hadn't appeared yet.
*Bang! Bang! Clack-shck!* Firing, firing, empty magazine dropping and snapping back in. A little higher up the pass, Captain Miss was monotonously humming alongside Elegy of the Square.
Having grown accustomed to charging blade in hand, accustomed to that direct and magnificent clash, the soldiers gradually felt a sense of daze in this moment. The slaughter—or rather, the battlefield harvest—unfolding before their eyes seemed so calm and numbing.
Wen Jifei was normally all smiles and cheeky grins, but the moment he raised Elegy of the Square on the battlefield, he became entirely expressionless, seemingly devoid of emotion.
Even last time, when Yao Yue stood behind him, it had been the same.
Suddenly, a faint sound: "*Sniff! ... Sniff!*"
Glancing covertly at Wen Jifei out of the corner of her eye, Captain Milla, as his teacher, felt utterly frustrated and embarrassed.
Wen Jifei noticed as well, feeling caught between laughter and tears. The woman beside him—his teacher, the very person who had taught him how to shoot and told him a gunman must never show emotional fluctuations once holding a weapon—seemed to truly be crying.
Her eyes were red. Milla tried hard to hold it in, but it only turned into the hitching, choked sobs of a little girl.
Only because her rhythm was timed so well did it not disrupt her shooting much.
"*Sniff*, bang!"
"*Sniff*, bang!"
"..."
There was no helping it. Using a source energy firearm like this for the first time, slaughtering Great Spikes with such wanton abandon for the first time, feeling powerful for the first time—Milla was simply overwhelmed with emotion.
Once a little girl who had chosen to enlist following her brother's sacrifice, pleading just to be allowed onto the battlefield, she had been a hopeless Grade E. Then, over many years, she became the only person in the Huaxia Sole Witness Legion granted special permission to use thermal weapons on the front line...
Yet even so, after nearly ten years in service, she had never personally killed a single Great Spike.
Nor had she been able to become an Azure Huaxia captain as a foreign warrior, as her brother had.
*Brother, look, isn't little Milla amazing?* Her brother had been the first foreign Huaxia captain in history. When he died, Milla had been only thirteen years old.
From the muzzle of Captain Miss, seemingly endless source energy bullets whistled forth.
In truth, taking down ordinary Great Spikes with source energy firearms was by no means an easy task. Compared to the massive frames of the Great Spikes, bullets were exceedingly small, and the creatures possessed tenacious vitality with very few truly lethal spots.
*Bang!* A bullet slammed into a black-armored Great Spike, punching clean through.
The Great Spike didn't fall. Instead, it halted in its tracks and roared up at the mountain pass.
How embarrassing.
"..." Milla hastily raised a hand and wiped her eyes, brushing away her tears.
"My vision blurred for a second," she said. "I'll finish it myself."
Wen Jifei replied coldly, "Mm."
...
Distance. There wasn't enough distance left.
Sniping targets one by one took time, while the speeds of both the humans and the Great Spikes were exceedingly swift... More than a third of the Great Spikes behind them likely remained. When Lao Jian looked up, he happened to catch sight of Milla appearing off.
*Did the others fail to make it in time?*
Without time to deliberate, Lao Jian called out in a firm, ringing voice:
"Prepare to turn and fight!"
They would turn and fight to buy time for Milla and Wen Jifei.
The soldiers running beside him immediately grasped his intent. Though questions lingered—such as how Second Lieutenant Wen and Miss Milla could have appeared alone—they instantly began adjusting their source energy surges, tightening their grips on their blades as they awaited orders.
This brought a subtle shift to their rhythmic movement.
And Wen Jifei and Milla happened to be the very people best at observing changes in movement momentum and making immediate judgments.
"No need!" Turning his head, Wen Jifei shouted toward Lao Jian. Casually sniping another Great Spike dead, he continued, "Just keep running. They're here."
Just as the words left his mouth, Little Prince and He Tangtang, along with two other soldiers clad in moth combat uniforms, appeared on the ridge.
Then came the heavy rumble of tires churning against the ground.
Before long, a modified off-road vehicle sped onto the mountain trail.
Then a second...
Upon appearing, the off-road vehicles neither paused nor slowed. They drove straight between Wen Jifei and Milla, charging head-on toward the battlefield.
Behind them, even more vehicles emerged.
A convoy of about thirty modified off-road vehicles, trailed at the rear by two similarly modified box trucks.
The trucks carried ammunition and other supplies. In their last "deal" with Azure, Wen Jifei had attached an additional condition: the Third Fixed Exploration Site would provide its own source energy blocks and dead iron, in exchange for having that Azure laboratory produce as many source energy bullets for him as possible.
Azure had naturally been more than willing to agree.
"..." As they ran, the soldiers broke into relaxed smiles, eyes fixed on the oncoming vehicles.
During the initial phase of this war, Azure formations had used vehicles as well. But later, as they pushed deeper into the battlefield—especially when Great Spikes began landing in full force—nearly ninety-nine percent of formations completely abandoned vehicles. Vehicles drew Great Spike craft too easily; it was practically suicide.
Yet the crew before them dared to drive such a massive convoy straight into the battlefield, navigate it safely here, and now drive headlong toward the Great Spike swarm.
This proved only one thing: they had been slaughtering Great Spike swarms the entire way. Guns and warriors, running rampant across the battlefield.
"...Stream Vanguard," an unfamiliar Armenian warrior murmured.
As the convoy drew near, suddenly—*whoosh!*
A suit of iron armor vaulted from a vehicle, bursting into midair and shooting overhead past the soldiers.
Immediately following, *whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...*
Dozens of figures leapt out behind it,
brandishing their blades as they surged toward the space behind the fleeing soldiers.
Chapter 669